Harry Potter and the White Wizard
by Cyberwraith9
Summary: In the wake of tragedy, Harry returns to Hogwarts with a new ally in his personal war with Voldemort. With the help of this unlikely hero, can Harry put an end to the scourge of the wizarding world for good? A Harry PotterDresden Files crossover!
1. Plans Awry

_Legalum Protectus Incantatum_

Harry Potter, its characters, and its locations are the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling. The Dresden Files, its characters, and its locations are the intellectual property of Jim Butcher. Both authors are substantially more talented and successful than Cyberwraith9, and are unaware that he has pirated their ideas for this profitless work of fanfiction.

* * *

**Harry Potter and the White Wizard**

_By Cyberwraith9_

* * *

_**Chapter One**_

_**Plans Awry**_

* * *

Privet Drive had never felt so unbearable. And considering the general hospitality of the neighborhood, with its quaint, squat houses lined up in neat rows, and the dry heat of the enduring drought, and the judgmental stares of the neighbors, it was quite the achievement to make his stay more unbearable.

In one such quaint house, Number Four of the lane, the young man lay draped across his bed, enduring much worse in his own mind without any thought to Privet Drive's unbearability. Sheaves of newsprint lay around and beneath him on the sheets, with fantastic pictures that moved on their own. This, too, he ignored. He had read each paper with only passing interest, scanning their headlines for the worst kind of news. Each time he did not find it, he tossed the paper aside to be forgotten in favor of the next paper. He repeated the process each day, until his entire room was covered in them.

He was taller than ever thanks to a growth spurt that made his ankles hang out from his jeans. Messy black hair splashed from his scalp, defiant of any comb and in desperate need of scissors. His face had the pinched look of someone with a passing acquaintance with hunger. He stared up at the ceiling with green eyes too deep for someone so young.

_One more week,_ Harry thought. _Just one more week._

The days had wound inexorably toward his seventeenth birthday. Since leaving Hogwarts, it had been one of his two only thoughts: what to do for his birthday. It had taken a month to decide, and a month more to hammer out the details with his coconspirators. Now, all that was left to do was wait, a task more arduous and exhausting than all his preparations combined.

Harry stared, lost in his only other thought: his mission. The sight of Dumbledore sailing off the tower's edge on a jet of green death had burned itself into Harry's mind. He thought endlessly of his private lessons with Dumbledore last year, and of the task Dumbledore had entrusted to him.

_The locket. The snake. Something of Hufflepuff's. Something of Ravenclaw's._ That had been Harry's mantra all summer. He thought endlessly about where he might find the four remaining horcruxes, and of how he might destroy them.

His determination had led to the impossible; his trunk sat at the foot of his bed, entirely packed. He had reorganized it three times to keep busy. Now it sat ready a full week before he was to join Ron and Hermione. His room was bare of all but his discarded copies of the Daily Prophet.

A soft fluttering at the window made Harry bolt upright. His eyes flew to the window, where a snowy owl landed on the sill. A yellowed envelope hung in her beak. The owl stared at him expectantly as he crossed the room to take her envelope.

"Have a good trip, Hedwig?" Harry asked. He stroked her feathers affectionately. Hedwig hooted once in acknowledgement, and then turned and left through the window. It had been a long trip. Harry wished her luck against the field mice before tearing the envelope open. He had waited for this letter all day.

_Harry,_

_Hope the Muggles are treating you well. I decided to write you from our hotel instead of waiting until we got back from holiday. Dad's still after me with his camera. He's so keen on seeing what his "little girl" is up to with all "that magic business." As if he'd be interested in Ancient Runes. Mum is still a bit cross with me for not helping with her shopping, but I've been busy with my own projects. I'm used to Mum being difficult by now anyway, but I wish my research was going better. I know how much you appreciate Ancient Runes. Maybe we'll have better luck when we meet up. I can't wait to see you at Hogwarts._

_Cheers,_

_Hermione_

Harry frowned. This same baffling innuendo was why it had taken them a month to plan their rendezvous, just in case anyone got hold of their owls. As near as he could tell, Hermione was all right, but someone she couldn't identify was still watching her. He took her line about her mother as meaning that she and Ron were quarrelling again (no surprises there). And, like Harry, she seemed to have had no luck finding new leads on any Horcrux.

Harry ached to join her, or to visit the Burrow and help Ron. Anything would be better than sitting on his bed, awaiting the moment when his mother's protection finally ran out and his last refuge from Voldemort failed.

"**BOY!**"

He had just crumpled the letter in disgust when a booming voice from below shook the house. His uncle filled Harry's ears with the notion that he was needed downstairs. Harry recognized the tone as being even less cheerful than usual. He was probably to be blamed for something. Nevertheless, Harry left his room and descended the stairs, knowing that his uncle's mood would only worsen if unanswered.

Vernon's face loomed at the bottom of the steps. Petunia waited with him, looking worriedly between her husband and the open front door. She, and Vernon's wide girth, blocked Harry's view of the door. Harry concerned himself instead with Vernon's flushed complexion and bristling mustache, which were sure signs that he was angrier than usual. Well-versed in Vernon's ire, Harry shrugged and said, "What?"

Vernon's jowls quivered as he tried to speak. He raised a finger to Harry, whose hand strayed toward his wand in his back pocket on reflex. But all Vernon did was sputter and point. The beginnings of his rant died once, then twice, as he visibly choked on his own displeasure. Finally, he stepped aside and swung his finger round to stab at the open door.

Harry leaned around his uncle's bulk. There, in the doorway, an imposing figure waited patiently and expectantly to be invited in. She stood in stature equal to the Dursleys only because of her tall, pointed hat. Wizarding robes hung from her prim, straight shoulders. The lines around her intelligent eyes crinkled as they fell on Harry. "Afternoon, Potter. Am I to stand on your welcome mat all day?"

"Professor McGonagall? With great effort, Harry pushed Vernon aside, allowing the deputy headmistress of Hogwarts (now actual headmistress, he recalled with a pang) room to enter. The Dursleys looked pleased as ever to have any of "his lot" in their house. Vernon's face grew redder with every step McGonagall took into the entryway, but he did not yet erupt. Harry ignored him and moved to greet her. "Er, what are you doing here? Ma'am?" he asked.

Her eyes roamed the house freely, unhampered by Petunia's disapproving look or Vernon's impending explosion. A not-quite critical look creased her face. She acted as if she hadn't heard Harry's question at all. "I trust you're having an alright summer?" she asked Harry.

When Harry opened his mouth to question her again, she shrugged out of her traveling cloak and held it toward him with an expectant look. Harry took the cloak and hastily jammed it into the hall closet. By the time he turned to ask again, McGonagall was halfway to the Dursleys' sitting room. He scrambled to follow. The Dursleys, he noted worriedly, were not far behind.

"Shall we have a drink?" she asked no one in particular as she was joined by Harry and his aunt and uncle. After appraising the room, McGonagall chose a chair cornering the couch. Harry could practically see the steam pouring from Vernon's ears at the sight of one of "them" in his favorite chair. Vernon's face purpled to a hue Harry had never before seen s McGonagall insisted, "Come on, then. I'll get the drinks."

Petunia warily led Vernon to the couch. Her eyes bugged as McGonagall drew her wand and waved it over the coffee table. Four chilled bottles of butterbeer appeared on the table, sweating onto the coasters with which they had come. As Petunia sat, easing Vernon onto the couch beside her, her horsy face grew longer with barely disguised disdain. Neither of the Dursleys touched their butterbeers, though McGonagall took hers and, as an afterthought, tapped her bottle with her wand, transfiguring it into a mug.

"I hate to be rude," Petunia began.

"Then by all means, please don't," McGonagall said cheerfully. She sipped her butterbeer, examining Harry over the rim of her mug. "Not thirsty, Potter? Sit down."

Harry unknowingly had been rooted to the spot waiting for Vernon to literally explode. He took stock of the remaining seats and, choosing wisely, dragged the ottoman around the table to sit opposite his aunt and uncle. At this point, being forced to sit next to Harry might prove to be too much for Vernon.

"Professor," Harry started.

McGonagall nodded to his butterbeer. "Drink up, Potter. You heard your aunt, no need for rudeness."

Harry fumbled with the top of his bottle, all the while searching for some clue in McGonagall's stony face. He took a single courtesy sip before insisting, "Professor, I don't understand. Why are you—"

Vernon's purple face finally cracked, right beneath his mustache. "Go on and tell him, then!" he thundered. "Tell him, and get out! Isn't it enough having to stomach you people just popping in and out without dealing with delay? Get out of this house and go on back to your own lot! I won't have you here a moment longer than I have to, so tell the boy and Get! **Out!**"

The booming words blew over McGonagall with the effect of a gentle breeze. She tilted her brow, and softly echoed, "My lot?"

"Yes!" roared Vernon, "Your lot!" He rose from his seat with Petunia dangling from his arm. She looked fearful as McGonagall weathered his abuse, as though the uninvited guest would skip all pretense and blast them with her wand. McGonagall, however, listened with polite interest as Vernon yelled, "It's bad enough having to live with _him_, and to have _that_ in our house. But you…you…people! You people blow in whenever it suits you, waving those silly little sticks of your, mucking about as if we don't matter! We've endured it for sixteen years, and have we ever complained?"

Harry knew the answer to that, and wisely bit his tongue.

"But enough is finally enough! As of right now, you people and your you-know-what are officially unwelcome. So hang your drinks, hang your sticks, hang _him_," and he pointed to Harry, who tried not to flinch, "And take it all out of here! Take the boy and go!"

"That," McGonagall said calmly, "is precisely what I came here to do."

The stunned silence that followed broke only for McGonagall's soft sips from her mug. Harry felt her disinterested gaze pierce his skull. He suddenly understood. She knew. Maybe not everything, but she knew he intended to set out on his own in a campaign against Voldemort. That was why she hadn't warned Harry of her arrival, and that was why she had come to collect him.

Petunia found her voice first. "He…he's leaving? For good?" she asked.

"Well, whether or not he comes back is entirely between the three of you," McGonagall said. "But yes, he's leaving, and he doesn't have to come back. The reason for his staying will become moot in…what is it, Potter, seven days?" She gave his weak nod a look, and then continued to the Dursleys, "So I've come for him a bit early. I've also come to warn you."

"Warn us?" Vernon puffed with a fraction of his former anger. "Am I to understand that you're threatening us?"

"I'd warrant you wouldn't understand it if I did," McGonagall retorted coldly. "And no, neither I nor 'my kind' is the threat. But starting next week, some very dangerous wizards may come looking for you."

Vernon's scowl turned from McGonagall to Harry. "Because of him," he said, putting as much venom as possible into the last word.

She nodded. "That's right. Because of your generosity in taking Potter in," and she stressed the word "generosity," narrowing her eyes, "the followers of the Dark Lord might seek to use you to get to him. And there's no use in blaming him," she told Vernon before he could inflate. "What's done is done. The important thing is for you to avoid these wizards at all costs."

A thousand questions swam in the confused looks of Vernon and Petunia, and Harry knew that once those questions flooded out, he would never get a word in edgewise. "Professor," he said quickly, "where are we leaving to?"

"Elsewhere," she said. A wave of her wand banished the butterbeer, including the one in Harry's hand. "Fetch your trunk, Potter. You are packed, aren't you? Fine, then, quickly."

Harry rushed up the stairs in a daze, spurred by McGonagall's tone. He realized halfway to his room what a mess of things this would make of their quest for Voldemort's horcruxes. By the time he had his trunk, he'd resolved himself to go along with McGonagall for now, but to promise nothing for the future. Dumbledore had given him this mission for a reason. Not even the commanding air of Hogwarts' new headmistress could sway him from that.

Dragging his trunk down the hall, he caught sight of a blockish head poked out one of the doors. Dudley had evidently heard his father's rant and had poked his head out to listen. The sound of Harry's trunk scraping the floor made Dudley turn. Surprise lit his dull features as he opened his door fully. "You're really leaving, then?" he asked in a strange voice.

"Looks that way." Harry always thought he would be more joyous at the prospect of leaving the Dursleys' house forever. Now he felt annoyed that McGonagall was interfering with his plan. "Try not to cheer too loudly. I don't think Uncle Vernon needs the competition."

Dudley shifted uncomfortably at this. Both he and Harry looked up at Vernon's shout of "You want us to WHAT?" Evidently, McGonagall's advice was not being well received. Even after Vernon lowered his voice, both boys could hear the beginnings of one of his famous rows brewing.

Shaking his head, Harry looked back to Dudley. "Do yourself a favor, and tell him you want to take a trip. They never could say no to you, and it might keep you one step ahead of Voldemort's Death Eaters. If you see or feel anything too strange to explain, start running, and don't stop."

Harry turned to continue toward the stairs, his conscience appeased, when Dudley's cry of "Wait!" turned him around. He watched his cousin fidget in the doorway, stammering, "I don't…what I mean is, I want to say…"

Harry blinked. "Blimey, Dud, are you trying to say goodbye? To me?"

"It's not like I hate you," Dudley said indignantly. At Harry's look, he insisted, "I don't! You… Well, you saved my life, didn't you? I don't think I ever thanked you for that."

An unstoppable grin came to Harry. "No. I don't fancy that you did."

Dudley squirmed. "Right. Heh. Dad would kill me if he heard me talking like this." With an uneasy smile, Dudley stuck his hand at Harry. "All right, Harry?"

An entire childhood of bullying and jealousy flooded back to Harry as he looked at the Dursleys' favorite child, their only son, and his clumsy farewell. He couldn't help it. He laughed, and shook Dudley's hand. "All right, Big D. Take care of yourself."

"You too."

Harry walked away from the strangest familial moment he'd ever had, dragging his trunk and shouldering his broom. He muscled the trunk down the stairs without too much undue clatter. Hedwig's empty cage, strapped to the trunk, rattled enough to alert McGonagall to his arrival. She walked out of the living room in a swirl of robes. The Dursleys followed close behind, as though she would bewitch the house out of existence the moment she left their sight.

"Now remember," McGonagall lectured the Dursleys, "Stay in populated areas. Don't go to any close relatives or friends, it's the first place they'll look."

Vernon's face steadily returned to its former shade of purple. "Yes, yes," he snapped. "It's all well and good for you lot to go flitting about on your brooms and flying cars, but us normal people have jobs and responsibilities. We can't go gallivanting about on your say-so."

She silenced him with a stern look, and turned his purple face white as she said, "You might wish to reconsider 'gallivanting' when a half-dozen Death Eaters are on your front lawn, turning your lovely home into so much kindling with a flick of their wands. But that is entirely up to you." She turned to Harry. "All set, Potter? Right. Drink this."

McGonagall pulled from her robes a small vial and handed it to Harry. He pulled its cork and examined the oily red substance inside. Before he could ask, she said, "It's a protection potion. You'll be glad for it later, believe me."

At her raised eyebrow, he tilted the vial back and drained its liquid. It tasted of cough syrup, and tingled briefly in the pit of his stomach. By the time he had corked and returned her empty vial, McGonagall had summoned her traveling cloak. She had not produced a vial for herself. "Professor, what kind of potion was that?" Harry asked.

"I'll explain on the way," she said. She reached around him and tapped his trunk with her wand. The trunk shivered and shrank, compacting itself until it resembled a small, black bean. McGonagall looked expectantly at Harry again until he plucked the bean from the floor and stuffed it in his pocket. He only hoped she would remember to untransfigure his trunk later. He doubted he could undo such a complicated spell so easily.

She nodded crisply. "We'd best be off. We've an appointment to keep, and I'd rather we weren't late. Say goodbye, Potter."

Harry glanced back at his aunt and uncle. Petunia wore a look he couldn't quite read. Vernon just scowled and tilted his head toward the door. "Um…goodbye," Harry said plainly.

He turned back. McGonagall tapped the closed door with her wand, muttering an incantation under her breath. She concentrated intently on the door, continuing the intricate pattern of tapping. Then she stepped back, evidently done. "You stay close," she told Harry. "Don't stray. No matter what you see, you must stay close, and never leave the path. Do you understand?"

He didn't, but nodded anyway, and shouldered his broom impatiently. It didn't matter to him where McGonagall was taking him. He had his own plans, and they didn't include coddling from any of the Order of the Phoenix.

But his plans ran to the back of his thoughts as McGonagall pushed open the door.


	2. The Nevernever

_**Chapter Two**_

_**The Nevernever**_

* * *

* * *

The world outside the door was no longer Little Whinging. But it was close.

The sky hung charcoal black above them. At first, Harry simply thought it was overcast, until he saw a bevy of stars flickering like torchlight. There were no cars on the street, which had become cracked as though aged a thousand years in the hours since Harry had last seen it. Trees and hedgerows stood bare. The skeletal plants had a dozen leaves at best spread among them, dry, wrinkled little leaves just one gust of wind away from crumbling. The clustered houses of the drive looked aged as well, rotting and empty, with broken windows gaping like jagged maws.

Harry gaped at the world outside the door. He looked in horror to the window, expecting to see that same desolation. Instead, he was astonished to find Privet Drive as it had always been sitting outside the window in blissful ignorance. His gaze flickered between the door and window as he tried to grasp the two version of the outside.

McGonagall evidently had no time for his confusion. "Come on," she said archly, waving him through. "I can't hold it open forever."

Clutching his broom, Harry nervously stepped out the door, wishing he could instead exit out the window to the cheerier of the two outdoors.

Behind him, Vernon thundered, "What in the BLOODY HELL did you do to our door?" Harry did not turn back. He had seen enough of Vernon's rage to last him a lifetime. McGonagall followed him out and closed the door behind her, tapping it with her wand for good measure.

The air felt cold and still, and smelled stale. Torches lined the street where lamps would have been. Their flickering light made the shadows of this decaying Privet Drive dance ominously. Once, Harry thought he saw a pair of yellow eyes glaring at him from the gnarled shadows of a tree. When he looked twice, the eyes were gone. Harry drew his wand and did not look a third time.

He turned around to ask McGonagall about their surroundings. The sight of his former home made him gasp: Number Four had suffered the same dilapidating effects as its neighbors, but unlike those other houses, it now looked like something completely different. This house looked more like an iron box, with bare walls rising up from the front step. Thick, rusty bars guarded its windows, nowhere thicker than over the second story window to what had previously been Harry's room. On this side, the door they had come through resembled a wrought gate.

"Professor," he said in a hush, "what did you do? How…?"

"We are no longer in Little Whinging, Potter," McGonagall said. She silenced his protest, and explained, "This place is called the Nevernever. It's a reality which coexists with our own, separated by a thin barrier, which I've brought us through."

She began striding down the walkway. Harry chased her, frustrated that she thought this would suffice as an explanation. "But why are we here? And where are we going?"

They walked in the middle of the street at a brisk pace. McGonagall, Harry noticed, kept her wand close at hand. Her eyes constantly searched their surroundings. She spoke without looking back at Harry. "The Nevernever is home to any number of extremely dangerous magical creatures. That's why the Ministry strictly prohibits contact of any kind with it. But distance in the Nevernever is different than distance in our world, which makes it very useful for travel, particularly if you wish to remain unnoticed."

"But why—?"

"Don't be dense, Potter," McGonagall said shortly, quieting Harry. "And don't think me a fool. I know for a fact that you have spent the summer communicating with Miss Granger and Mister Weasley. You might wish to invest a bit more thought in your code, or find a different method of communication altogether besides owls."

Harry turned red with embarrassment. He turned redder at being lectured as though he were a child. "Been reading my mail, have you?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered.. "And if I was clever enough to puzzle out your intentions to hunt the Dark Lord, you can bet that the Death Eaters have figured it out as well. They've been watching you as closely as we have, and they'll be prepared to strike the moment you lot slip off on your own."

Heated anger flushed full in Harry's face. "So you've come to collect me, is that it? You drag me into this Never place so I can hide? I suppose I'm not capable enough of protecting myself, am I? Never had to fend for myself against the Death Eaters before," he said snidely.

McGonagall stopped on the cracked street and turned on him in a swirl of cloak. For a brief second, he thought she was going to lose her temper and shout. But her voice remained even as she said, "What I suppose is that no fewer than four exceptional people have died to keep you alive. Each of them was brave, and far more magically capable than you are now. Each one of them fought and died—gladly died, Potter—so that you might live. They knew, as I do, that you are too important to lose to the Dark Lord. And no childish and arrogant assertion of self-reliability will make me let their deaths be in vain. You are going to Hogwarts, Mister Potter, where you will be safe under our care, even if I must transfigure you into a mouse and keep you caged in my classroom."

Harry blinked McGonagall's steely eyes. She stared him down, and then turned on her heel, resuming their march down the ghoulish lane. Harry ran several steps to catch up to her.

"Professor," he said in a softer tone, "I appreciate all that. I don't need to be reminded who died for me. They're why I have to go. I'm the only one that can stop Voldemort, I know it. Dumbledore knew it, too. And he…" Harry paused, hesitant to divulge the secrets Dumbledore had entrusted to him. "He gave me a mission. Me, Ron, and Hermione, we're supposed to do something for him."

Her steps slowed, allowing Harry to walk alongside her. She looked up at him with mild interest. "Well, that changes things, doesn't it? Of course I have to let you complete a task that Professor Dumbledore gave you." Harry almost smiled, but stopped as she said, "Just as soon as you explain what this mission is, so that the Order can offer you proper support and protection. If it's that important, you'll need help."

"I…" Harry felt torn. He knew Dumbledore had trusted Minerva McGonagall as highly as anyone else, but he had also kept the secret of the horcruxes carefully guarded. Without any way of knowing for certain, Harry would have to play it cautiously. "I can't tell you, Professor, or anyone. Professor Dumbledore wanted me to keep it a secret."

McGonagall simply nodded. "Very well, then. Back to Hogwarts it is."

Harry's temper flared again at her blasé stonewalling. "I won't need your permission, Professor," he said, stressing her title. "In a week, I'll be of age, and I won't have to stay at Hogwarts. You can't find me once I apparate."

"You're right. Not unless I somehow got you to drink a Trace Potion."

Harry stopped dead in his tracks. He recalled the potion McGonagall had offered him in the Dursleys' entryway. The cool, slight tingle in his stomach returned at the memory of the potion. "You put a Trace on me?" he shouted after her. His voice echoed off the endless rows of rotting houses. Something in the dead bushes stirred. Harry jogged to catch up, unwilling to brave the Nevernever alone, but nonetheless livid.

"Yes," McGonagall said. "I've placed a Trace spell on you, completely separate from the one the ministry uses to monitor underage magic. Wherever you go, I can find you, and bring you back to Hogwarts. And I assure you that, should I find myself needing to retrieve you, I shan't be gentle about it."

Seething silence fell between Harry and McGonagall as they continued down the lane. He felt betrayed by her, and miserable that his mission had been all but derailed so soon. What would Ron and Hermione say when he told them of this trick of McGonagall's? What would Dumbledore have thought?

Presently, the row of slumped, condemnable houses to either side of them gave way to marshy fields, and the road became a vague path marked by hastily arranged river rock. Tall cattails stood along the path and around the black bile marshes. Blue mist rose from the water, odorous and thick, and standing deathly still in the stale air.

Now Harry had no trouble spying the yellow eyes that followed them. They blinked in and out of the dark patches between the cattails. Whatever owned the eyes never made more than a soft rustling as it pursued them through the cattails. Harry stayed close to McGonagall, resenting her every step of the way.

They walked for over an hour. In that time, the ominous marshlands became a gray thicket, which gave way to a picturesque wooded grove in the throes of dawn. Harry marveled at the sudden transition between the regions through which their path took them. He paid the point at which they changed regions special mind, and noticed that they were in a state of flux; the drab, crowded thicket pushed against the sunny grove as though both fought for assertion.

Eventually, the path took them to the edge of a cornfield. It was here that the path ended. McGonagall stepped off the end of the road and pushed into the corn, which appeared too bright and too yellow to be real. Harry hesitantly followed.

"Professor," Harry said, breaking their long silence, "where are we? I mean, where will we be? You said this Never-place was excellent for traveling. Are we going to Hogwarts?" The lush cornfields didn't strike Harry as being in keeping with Hogwarts' gothic castlery. But then, he knew so little of this realm, he couldn't be sure what the Nevernever near Hogwarts would look like. Then his heart gave a little leap as he considered the rural field. "Are we going to the Burrow?" he asked.

McGonagall seemed more at ease in the corn than she had on the path, though not by much. At least it seemed as though the yellow eyes following them had left. "No," McGonagall said. "The Burrow is too well known to our enemies. I'm afraid everyone knows that the Weasleys consider you one of their own. It's the first place anyone would look for you, and not nearly as secure as Hogwarts."

Discontent arose in Harry's stomach. "But then where are you taking me?"

The corn continued endlessly. McGonagall continued in her maddeningly patient tone, "As you'll recall, Hogwarts again needs a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. As Acting Headmistress, the wearying task of finding a new one has fallen to me. Luckily, I believe I know someone qualified for the position."

"Who? I mean, is he any good?"

"He's more than qualified to teach a course on defending oneself, Mister Potter," McGonagall informed him smartly. But her voice softened as she continued. Harry could practically hear her slipping hip-deep into nostalgia. "He's a good man, and quite capable. More importantly, he's someone I trust implicitly. After…recent events, I think the school could do with a bit more trust. And protection." He couldn't be sure, but Harry thought he saw her eyes glisten before she blinked hard and resolved them once more.

Harry wanted to ask more, but the cornfield's abrupt end made him pause. He and McGonagall paused at the corn's edge to view a clearing in which a tall, imposing fortress loomed. Harry had to crane his neck to glimpse the highest battlements of the stone fortress, whose walls stood tall and thick behind a bubbling red moat. The only entrance to the fortress lay beyond a lowered drawbridge and behind a studded iron portcullis.

Their trek resumed in the clearing, with the fortress as their destination. As they drew loser, Harry found it hard not to stop and gape at the sheer size of the fortress. It easily rivaled Hogwarts in size, and looked far sturdier and newer.

He could feel the heat rising from the moat beneath them as they crossed the drawbridge. McGonagall rapped her wand against the portcullis, and then folded her hands and waited patiently. Harry stood behind her, bursting with questions. "So you've brought me here to help you recruit your new teacher?" he asked, feeling slightly put out. But then, Dumbledore had done the same with him last year to obtain Slughorn. Did he really have a right to feel so indignant? Harry felt his stomach tingle again, and decided that he did.

"Partly," McGonagall said with a nod. "Truthfully, I'm hoping he'll be willing to keep an eye on you until the school year begins. I have quite a bit to do, and I can't be expected to watch you all the time."

Harry drew a long breath to launch into his own tirade. He drew on years of watching Uncle Vernon's outbursts, and prepared to tell McGonagall that he did not, in fact, need watching after, and that he was, in fact, going to leave to finish his mission for Dumbledore, and that if she did not like that, she could, in fact, stick her wand in it.

The portcullis abruptly ascended, screeching noisily in its housing. Dark, dank interior lay beyond the gate, making Harry recall the dangerous terrain they had seen from the path.

But McGonagall did not lead him in as he'd expected. Instead, she ran her wand through the air in a large rectangle that ended on the ground. Cold, red fire coiled where her wand had passed, creating a doorway. The space in the doorway filled with the same cold fire. As soon as it was finished, McGonagall stepped through. Harry followed quickly.

He was slapped in the face with a wave of hot humidity. It was a startling jolt after leaving the cool, ominous stillness of the Nevernever. Harry blinked under the intensity of the real sun and took stock of their surroundings.

The fortress was gone. He'd half-expected that, after the startling transformation the Dursleys' house had gone through. What he hadn't expected was the quaint, picturesque farmland they'd stepped into. They stood at the gate of a squat, wormy wooden fence, which encompassed a small farmhouse and several dozen acres of corn.

Both the house and the corn were painfully mundane compared with what Harry had seen in the Nevernever. The corn stood as tall as Harry, lush and green. The farmhouse barely stood two stories tall, and was composed of chipped white siding and a roof missing several shingles. It reminded Harry a little of the Burrow, if only in its comfortable dilapidation.

McGonagall surveyed the farm with an obvious air of nostalgia. She clearly saw something Harry did not. "Welcome to Missouri," she said.


	3. The White Council

_**Chapter Three**_

_**The White Council**_

* * *

McGonagall led Harry onto the farm, brushing aside its creaking gate. As Harry walked through the gate, he felt an uncomfortable pressure buzzing against his temples. The pressure vanished with another step. 

Though the sun hadn't reached the top of the sky here, the air felt thick and hot, sticky with humidity that Little Whinging's drought lacked. A gravel road crunched under his trainers on their way up to the house. Harry felt a light sweat trickle from his brow. He wiped it irritably, and wondered if he was to be dragged around like luggage for the rest of the summer.

The farm had all the hallmarks Harry would expect: a silo and a barn sitting opposite the house's face, and a chicken coop not far from there, and a tractor and pickup truck sat in between. But as he looked, he noticed an odd quality about the farm. Its barn and coop were made of wood as rotten as the fence's, and rust had all but eaten the silo. The tractor had tall weeds growing around it. Only the house and truck looked at all functional, and then only in comparison to the remaining fixtures of the farm.

McGonagall led him through a defunct vegetable patch to the front porch. She ascended its creaky steps and rapped sharply on the door. Her wand, Harry noticed, had disappeared back into her robes, and her posture had relaxed. Harry hastily stuffed his own wand back in his pocket before the door cracked open.

A single eye peered through the crack. "I thought it would be you," a gruff voice said in an accent Harry had never before heard. "You never were one to give up easy."

"As I recall, you used to find that charming," McGonagall replied. There was a musical tinge in her voice that Harry couldn't recall ever hearing from her. It was certainly a tone she never took with any Gryffindor. "Might we come in?" she asked of the eye.

"Not so fast." The eye narrowed. Harry could see years' worth of distrust weight heavily on the man's gaze. In an even gruffer tone, he demanded, "When did we first meet?"

McGonagall drew herself upright. Her pleasant tone faded into a more familiar lecture. "Glasgow," she answered, "shortly after the war. You were quite rude, and so I hexed you with—"

"Enough."

The door flew open, revealing a man roughly Harry's height. He possessed thinning white hair and wrinkles that put him close to McGonagall's age. His faded flannel shirt and jeans stretched over a paunch that hid his belt buckle. A staff of polished wood sat in his hand, its end resting on the floor. His eyes glimmered with the energy of a much younger soul as they fell full on McGonagall's smile.

"C'mon in, Minnie," he said. "Anything to avoid hearing that tired old saw again."

He stepped aside for McGonagall to enter. As Harry followed, he felt the man's gaze press heavily upon him. The man examined him with open suspicion, though his slight smile never flinched. "So, this is the kid, huh?" he asked.

McGonagall nodded. "This is Harry Potter," she said, and added with a pointed glare at Harry, "a student at Hogwarts. Harry, this is Ebenezer McCoy."

Harry's hand disappeared into McCoy's handshake. It was numbing, but mercifully brief, as McCoy then led them both into the farmhouse.

Inside, the farmhouse struck Harry as strange in its ordinariness. His summers with the Dursleys had kept Harry grounded in his sense of wonder for the wizarding world. But the dim hallway welcomed him with unmoving pictures hung on its walls, and a chipped grandfather clock at the end. It seemed as ordinary as any other Muggle house he had ever visited. That alone made it bizarre by wizarding standards.

They adjourned to a sitting room with large, friendly windows that faced the gravel drive. Harry gingerly lowered himself next to McGonagall on a sofa that looked too old to recall an era in which it could have been deemed fashionable. Everything about the farmhouse felt that way to Harry. The walls' white paint had yellowed, and the furniture had faded, and Harry spied a light coat of dust covering the mantle's knickknacks that would have sent his aunt into conniptions. The whole house had aged in a comfortable, relaxed fashion that set its occupants at ease.

"Make yourselves comfortable," McCoy said from the doorway. "I'll be back in a minute with drinks."

The uncomfortable silence that followed made Harry squirm. He looked over at McGonagall, who stared idly around the room, her eyes distant with memory. "If he's an old friend of yours, I don't see why you need me here, Professor," he told her softly, archly. "Doesn't he want the post?"

McGonagall looked slowly to Harry. A tight smile pursed her lips. "I am counting on you to be your irascible self, Potter, nothing more."

McCoy walked back into the room and passed out three bottles before settling into a patchwork easy chair whose upholstery matched his shirt. Harry noticed that only he had received root beer, while the bottles that McCoy and McGonagall had were unmarked and home-bottled. "So, what's the occasion?" McCoy asked. "I can't imagine you'd poof halfway around the globe just to hear 'no' in person, Minnie."

While Harry reeled at the nickname, McGonagall pushed away her beer. "That's precisely why I came, Ebenezer. Or rather, I came to transfigure your 'no' into something more positive."

Bemusement spread in the wake of McCoy's generous sip of his own bottle. "And I suppose you trotted out one of your prized students to change my mind?" He chuckled and looked at the uncomfortable Harry. "How about it, kid? You gonna convince me to drop everything and move halfway around the world to teach you not to pick fights with strange wizards?"

While Harry scowled, McGonagall smiled. "Perish the thought. Mister Potter is a far cry from our best student. Besides which, you're too clever a wizard to fall for such puerile manipulation."

"Mmm. And too humble a wizard to be taken in with ego-stroking."

"Quite."

McCoy took another sip and pondered his visitors. Harry could feel the old man's eyes pressing into his, a literal pressure that made him squirm and break contact. After a moment, McCoy set his bottle aside and laced his fingers together. "No," he said soberly. "I can't do it. I'm sorry."

"You 'won't' do it," McGonagall corrected him archly. "You see, 'can't' and 'won't' are substantially different words."

His eyebrows dropped to match hers. "Be fair, Minnie. Ten years ago, I could have dropped everything to help you out. You know I'd do that now if I could. But I'm a Senior Councilmember now, and I've got my own war to fight. You can't expect me to abandon the White Council to baby-sit your boy here from one rogue wizard."

The last of the familiar warmth drained from McGonagall's voice. She sat straight and proper, becoming the McGonagall Harry knew. "Then I clearly expected too much," she said. "Far be it for me to risk the ire of your White Council. Heaven knows you would never ask me to defy my government to help a friend in need."

A storm front gathered in McCoy's face. He half rose, and his voice rose to match. "I haven't forgotten what I owe, Minerva. Don't—"

"What's the White Council?" Harry asked loudly. He had tired of being McGonagall's silent bargaining chip, and disliked the idea of watching them bicker back and forth. Hermione and Ron did more than enough of that to give him his fill. "Is it part of the Ministry?"

Both of them settled back into their seats. McCoy regarded Harry skeptically, glancing briefly at McGonagall, who offered nothing. "No," he said. "No, the Council and the Ministry don't have anything to do with each other. Period. End of story."

"It's all right, Ebenezer," McGonagall said. "Potter is more than capable of keeping secrets." She gave Harry an irritated look, one he was happy to match, and said, "The White Council is a secret political body of wizards that governs its community of wizards and witches."

Harry blinked. "But that's what the Ministry is," he said.

She nodded. "Correct. Both the Ministry and the White Council have their own citizenry for whom they claim responsibility. The division is made by region, or by bloodline, when regional disagreements arise."

"But I've never heard of them before." Harry would be the first to admit that his Muggle upbringing left him at a disadvantage in the wizarding world. But even he should have been aware of a second wizard government so large as to stretch all the way to America.

"You wouldn't have," MyCoy said. "The Ministry and the Council were at war a long time ago, right around the when the Black Plague was taking care of Europe's population problems. They finally got tired of killing each other, and came up with a set of accords. Both governments live in secret from ordinary folks, and more importantly, from each other."

"The Ministry and Council remain aware of each other," McGonagall said, "but avoid all contact and interference. It has kept the peace for countless generations."

Harry looked between them. He had forgotten his anger for the moment, confused and surprised by the sudden knowledge that an entirely separate world of wizarding existed. "But you want him to teach at Hogwarts? Won't that violate those accords? How should you two even know each other?"

McCoy's expression softened as he looked back to McGonagall. "I didn't have a lot of love for the rules back in my younger days. Truth be told, I don't shine to them much now, if it means peoples' lives. But I didn't lie when I say I couldn't disappear from my responsibilities."

Opposite McCoy's genuinely affectionate expression, McGonagall looked cold. "Such a shame," she said. "I think you're depriving our students of a marvelous opportunity."

"I'm running a war, Minnie. Don't suppose you could take time out from chasing down your little rogue wizard to help me beat an entire Court of vampires?" McCoy asked sardonically.

"Well, I see you were right," said McGonagall. "I'm sorry to have wasted both our time, just as I'm sorry to deprive my students of such a fine example of wizardry." She stood in a huff, straightening her robes with a sharp gesture. "May I freshen up before we go?" she asked.

McCoy made an overly gracious gesture toward the hallway. McGonagall returned it in kind with a bow and then exited, leaving Harry alone and uncomfortable with McCoy.

The old man's eyes felt heavy against Harry's skull, so he did everything in his power to avoid them, letting his gaze wander around the room. Something about the room bothered Harry, but he couldn't quite place what it was.

Finally, McCoy must have grown tired of the silence. "So, you plan on beating ol' Snake Face by yourself?" he asked.

The idle mockery in his tone made Harry bristle. "Yes," he replied in kind, heavily sarcastic, "I plan on doing exactly that."

"Minnie seems to think you'll be road kill before you take two steps. She must be worried if she's coming all this way to ask me to baby sit."

It was all Harry could do not to pull out his wand and wipe the smug smile off of McCoy's face. "Professor McGonagall is wrong," Harry said in a strained voice. "I don't need help, and I'm certainly no baby that needs looking after."

Abruptly, the smile on McCoy's face vanished. He leaned forward with a seriousness he hadn't yet demonstrated to Harry, steepling his fingers between his knees. "I've squared off against him once, back in my younger days. Was lucky to come out of it with my skin. This is nothing against you, but you aren't ready. You don't have what it takes. Voldemort is going to kill you without missing a step. Why pick a fight you can't win?"

Harry knew he should have been angry, but wasn't. He had asked himself the same question any number of times over the summer. Why fight Voldemort? Because a prophecy told him he would? Because his parents' deaths had all but assured that he would never have a normal life? Because Dumbledore's death demanded justice?

"Because someone has to," Harry said. "Voldemort and his Death Eaters kill and threaten whoever they want, and they get away with it because people are afraid. Voldemort rules through fear. It's been this way for so long that people are even afraid to say his name. It's cost me my family. I won't live like that. I'll never live like that. Voldemort will have to kill me, because I won't live in fear. Not now. Not ever."

McCoy remained silent in the wake of Harry's words. Then, slowly, he smiled a genuine smile, and leaned back. "Well, all right, Hoss. All right."

McGonagall chose this opportune moment to reappear in the hall. "Well, shall we be off, Potter? We've taken enough of Mister McCoy's time."

"Drop the act, Minnie. You've got me." McCoy stood and made a big show of brushing his hands clean. "I gotta say, you sure can pick 'em. The boy doesn't have two bits of brain sitting underneath that crow's nest, but he's got guts."

She mirrored his genuine smile. Harry watched the pair ruefully, feeling used, and experiencing more than a touch of déjà vu. "I recall your admiration for both of those qualities, being that you exemplify them. So you'll take the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts?" asked McGonagall.

McCoy walked to the fireplace, shaking his head. "Nope. I wasn't lying when I said I couldn't. But," he added before she could protest, "I'll do you the next best thing. Someone I think your boy Harry is going to like." He took a small, long, dusty box from the mantle and opened it. A short, old wand of polished oak lay inside. McCoy shook the cobwebs from its handle before gripping it. "I imagine the Ministry's still watching you? Okay. It's been a while, but I think I can still side-along a pair."

Now McGonagall expressed confusion, to which Harry felt a sharp twinge of schadenfreude, even though he was just as confused. "Fine, yes. But where are we going?" she asked.

McCoy smiled enigmatically. "Chicago. We have to meet your new professor."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

And now this crossover finally begins! Or rather, it will next chapter, when our other Harry enters the narrative with both blasting rods blazing. 

I hope you've enjoyed Harry Potter and the White Wizard. How I wish I could say this story sprang from my mind alone, but like so many others, I had to steal quite a bit of it from another author. And no, I'm not talking about the normal amount of borrowing that is the practice of fanfiction.

This story came to be as a result of Bruce Willis's summer blockbuster, Live Free or Die Hard. I went to see the movie with my roommate and our friend, the author Isamu. He and we have been friends for years, and like so many others of our kind, spent much of the summer in theaters jumping from one blockbuster to the next.

After the movie, we stood in the theater parking lot conversing, coming down off the adrenaline high of watching a man best a VTOL fighter jet with nothing but his wits (honestly, this was an amazing scene, regardless [or perhaps because of its stupidity). And, as so many conversations do, this one wandered. We spoke of other movies we saw and liked this year, which led us to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. All three of us had read and watched Harry for years, and had finished the final literary installment of his adventures. This, then, led to our discussion of other magical narratives.

And that's when something magical happened.

I can't say who came up with the idea first. I would say it was I. Isamu would insist that it was he. He is, of course, a pathological liar who cannot be trusted. But regardless, two key items of interest came into play in the conversation that formed the basis of this story:

1. Harry Potter is a wizard student who attends a school that is in annual need of a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

2. Harry Dresden, the titular hero of The Dresden Files, is a wizard detective/cop/brawler who is well versed in the art of defending against the dark arts.

A later search on Google confirmed that no one had ever done this before (if I'm wrong, please send a message or a review to let me know, so that I can plug the story). We joked about it in that parking lot, coming up with scenarios in which Harry Dresden and Harry Potter would ensue in a cavalcade of hi-jinx. Then we both agreed that neither of us had the time or energy to pick the story up.

Then I wrote it.

So now I say to Isamu, I'm sorry for poaching the story, and more sorry for not giving credit where credit is due sooner. Understand, reader, that much of the story you read here sprang from our collective imagination. I dedicate this story to him as much as I do to you and to our pair of Harry's. Of course, the genius style and diction in the coming chapters are all mine.

And for those Harry Potter fans who have never read The Dresden Files, I want you to go Google him, Wikipedia him, and then venture to your nearest book store and purchase the paperback copy of Storm Front, the first novel of The Dresden Files. Everyone should have a wizard detective/cop/brawler in his or her lives. I know Harry Potter will.

Enjoy the show.

Cyberwraith9

Ghost of the Net

And your Muggle Extraordinaire


	4. The Other Harry

_**Chapter Four**_

_**The Other Harry**_

* * *

Harry reappeared on a bed of trim, neat grass. His head throbbed with the pressure of the side-along apparation. It had felt like an eternity since he had last stood in McCoy's farmhouse in Missouri, waiting for the old wizard to grumble and wave his way through the proper spell.

He stood on the lawn of a large boardinghouse, the walls of which wore flecked, faded paint. Concrete steps led up to the house's main double doors. More concrete steps led down in a stairwell, probably to some basement or utility room. Of the suburb around him, this house was by far the largest. Most of the other houses didn't stand more than two stories, though they all shared that same sense of comfortable age.

In the distance, Harry saw a wide, tight knot of skyscrapers rising above the roofs of the neighborhood. Tall, gleaming spires of glass and stone glistened in the summer day. The sight reminded him of London, even though he knew it wasn't.

The odd quiet made Harry frown. He looked around, expecting to find a smug McGonagall and McCoy waiting for him to get his bearings. Instead, he discovered something much worse. He was alone, without his wand, and without any real notion of where he was or what he should do.

His heart pounded as he turned in a circle, as though hoping he had somehow missed the old witch and wizard. He wondered if McCoy had somehow lost him during the apparation. Side-alongs weren't the easiest spell to manage, and given how rough the trip had been, it was entirely possible that he had ended up anywhere. He wouldn't know Chicago from any other big city like it. The street posts written in English were a small comfort, but that was all.

There was a lone car parked against the curb in front of the boardinghouse. Harry caught a glimpse of color draped across its back seat that rang familiar at the back of his mind. With no one in sight, and nothing better to do, he walked toward the car.

It was a Volkswagen Beetle, battered and scratched almost beyond recognition and old enough to be Harry's grandfather. Pieces of the old car had obviously been replaced throughout its onerous tenure, leaving its hood, its doors, and one of its fenders each a different color, but the main body of the car clung to a faded shade of blue. It reminded Harry a little of Mr. Weasley's old Anglia when it had emerged from the Forbidden Forest after months of feral prowling.

Harry peered into the back window of the Beetle, and gasped. A length of silken fabric lay across the cramped back seat of the car. It was Harry's invisibility cloak.

He seized the passenger door and gave it a vicious tug. It would not budge. Frustrated, he leaned against the glass of the window, trying to figure out how his cloak had gotten locked in a strange car, of all places. There was still no sign of McGonagall or McCoy. Surely they must have missed him by now, wherever they were. And the trace spell McGonagall had tricked Harry into consuming would lead her straight to him.

In the meantime, he had no means with which to get to his cloak. Looking miserably at the door's lock, he wished for his wand. His finger jabbed at the door as he grumbled, half in jest, "Alohamora."

The door remained shut. Harry fought the urge to kick the stubborn door until it yielded him his cloak. He doubted the car's owner would notice another dent. Then he had a thought. With nothing to lose, he circled the car, and grasped the handle of the other door.

The driver's side was unlocked. Harry flung the door open and shoved the front seat down, climbing into the back of the car, gathering his cloak from the back bench. It had been lying in the sun, but it still felt cool. The cloak hadn't been in the car for long.

A metallic clang thundered from the direction of the boardinghouse, making Harry jump. Fumbling, he reached back and slammed the car door closed, and folded back the seat. Then he ducked down in front of the back bench, craning a single eye up over the edge of the window.

The last thing he wanted was to be caught rooting through a stranger's car. With luck, the noise would just someone leaving the boardinghouse. When they had gone, he could sneak back out of the car and decide his next move.

The front doors of the boardinghouse remained still and empty, and were made of wood besides. It wasn't until he caught a flicker of movement from the concrete stairs that he realized someone was coming out of the basement.

A towering man rose out of the stairway. He had dark, unkempt hair, and eyes that were narrowed with faraway worry. Despite the heat, the man wore a long leather coat with a heavy mantle. He was so tall that Harry felt sure he must be two people stood one on the other, and he carried a long stick in one hand.

As the man left the stairs, a great black dog trotted up after him. The dog had no lead, but it followed close to the man, pacing his long stride. Harry felt a pang as he watched the dog follow the man to the curb. It was silly to feel that way, Harry knew. After all, that dog looked nothing like Sirius had. But even still, Harry felt just a little lonelier in that strange land than he had a moment ago.

It wasn't until the man and his dog circled the car that Harry realized he was hiding exactly where they were going. Swearing under his breath, Harry flung his invisibility cloak over himself, jerking its edges down between him and the seats to cover him completely. He only just pulled the cloak into place when the driver's door opened.

"Let's go, Mouse," the man said, and folded the front seat down. The tremendous dog—Mouse, Harry assumed—loped into the car. His great, shaggy paws pressed down into the seat before he settled himself along the width of the bench, packing every available inch of the seat with fur and bulk. The dog's head rested right next to where Harry held his breath.

The tall man wedged his stick into the passenger seat, and then folded himself behind the Beetle's steering wheel and started the car. Harry used the noise of the engine to breathe again. He felt his hope dwindle and his muscles cramp as the man drove him unknowingly further into the unknown.

Through the fabric of his cloak, Harry watched the dog lying on the seat. Mouse stared back at him with soulful eyes. The dog's ears pricked, as though he could tell Harry was looking at him. Lifting his muzzle, Mouse snuffled at the cloak's edge. Harry's chest seized as he waited for Mouse to bark, or growl. But Mouse just gave him a doggy sigh, lay back on the seat, and continued to watch Harry without incident.

"Yeah, I know," the man said, presumably to Mouse. "I just hope we're in time. Hell's bells, how did I not see it sooner? A lot of people could wind up dead, all because I couldn't work out a basic piece of magic."

Harry had to bite his tongue to keep from echoing the man's last word. Magic? Of all the dumb luck, Harry had somehow stumbled into the car of another wizard. And, true to Harry's brand of luck, that wizard was already talking about innocents potentially dying.

"Not your finest hour, Harry," the man said.

This time, Harry couldn't help himself. He gasped. Mouse's ears pricked at the sound while Harry waited for the man to turn around and reveal that he knew Harry was in the car. But how did the man know his name?

The man sighed, and then thumped the steering wheel with his palm. "All you had to do was look at a map," he snarled. "But no, you let that lunatic lead you all over town for two damn days." He turned around, and said to the back seat, "Next time I do something that amateur, I want you to fetch my staff and give me a good crack on the head with it."

Harry started to answer, until he realized that the man was talking to Mouse. He suddenly realized that he wasn't the only Harry in the car. The man had been swearing at himself.

Turning forward again, the other Harry groaned. "Bob's never going to let me hear the end of this," he said.

The rest of the car ride lasted in silence. Harry crouched under his invisibility cloak, breathing as silently as he could while the other Harry drove. He kept glancing at Mouse, expecting some kind of reaction. The enormous dog seemed content to watch the spot where Harry sat.

The other Harry drove half an hour, stopping and swerving through city traffic that Harry couldn't see. Suburbia flashed past the window for the first few minutes, but was replaced quickly by taller, older buildings and businesses. The car stopped amidst a grove of tall buildings, not skyscrapers, but only just.

With practiced struggling, the other Harry dislodged himself from the small car, and then folded his seat down and whistled for Mouse to follow. When the car door slammed and the tall man disappeared from the window. Harry counted silently to twenty before pulling himself up onto the back seat for a proper look outside.

The old Beetle sat parked next to the curb of a thoroughfare. Either end of the block had been barricaded by police cars with flashing lights. More police cars were parked across the street at the other curb, where they had formed a perimeter that bumped up over the far sidewalk. A dozen men and women crouched behind the wall of cars, most of them with pistols brandished. One of them had a rifle propped on the trunk of his car.

The police brigade warily watched the front doors of a massive store. The sign over the store read "Sportsmart Megastore!" as it rotated slowly atop its post. A banner draped above the door assured Harry that he couldn't spell Sportsmart without "$mart."

The tall other Harry jogged over to the back of the police perimeter around Sportsmart with his dog. Harry disliked the idea of losing track of the only other wizard he knew of at the moment. So, clutching his cloak in place, he crawled to the front of the beetle and opened the curbside door just wide enough to let him slip through.

By the time he caught up to Tall Harry, the other wizard was deep in conversation with a tiny woman wearing a black vest and a holster. At first glance, Harry half-thought she was a child playing dress-up. But the subtle age of her face became apparent as he drew closer. A police badge flashed at her hip as she folded her arms and scowled at something Tall Harry said. Despite her height, she exuded an aura of authority that set her apart from the other police behind the barricade.

"Damn it, Harry," swore the tiny, blonde woman. "You do not come to me with shit like this now. Not in the eleventh hour. We are out of options and out of time."

"Murph, I am telling you, you go in there now, and it's game over, man." Tall Harry stamped his staff for emphasis. "You have to let me take care of this one my way, or a lot of people are going to die."

"People have already died," Murph retorted. As Tall Harry's face soured, her voice softened. "He has hostages, Harry. The call's already been made. Special Investigations already has the go-ahead. As soon as Stallings gets here, we're—"

Metal gonged as Tall Harry slammed a folded map from his coat onto the hood of the nearest car. The sniper training his rifle on the trunk looked up in alarm. Both Murph and Tall Harry ignored his surprise.

"Look," Tall Harry snapped, and spread the map with a sharp gesture. "Notice a pattern with all the locations? Connect the dots."

Murph's eyebrows shot into her bangs. "Is that a…?"

Tall Harry nodded. "A pentagram. The son of a bitch is making a circle, and it encompasses most of the city. And we're right in the middle of…"

Silently watching the conversation from under his cloak, Harry frowned in puzzlement. Why was the wizard even bothering with the Muggle police? He could just charm her memory or apparate into the store. What's more, he was talking openly to a Muggle about magic, something that floored Harry. That was one of the Ministry's cardinal sins, almost as bad as the Unforgivable Curses

It began to dawn on Harry that this wizard must have belonged to the other wizard nation. The White Council, McCoy had called it. But was this the wizard McCoy had meant to introduce? His questionable Muggle summer wear made him look like a wizard, but everything else about him seemed dreadfully ordinary.

Mouse's ears pricked up as Harry crept closer. The shaggy giant looked back at Harry, and tilted his head, stopping Harry in his tracks. After a moment's inspection, Mouse dropped his mouth open and panted at Harry, almost as if to smile.

"—bring the whole damn Nevernever crashing down around our ears!" Tall Harry finished, and gonged the map on the hood. The loud noise startled Harry back into listening. "If you go in there, guns blazing, you're going to give him exactly what he wants. If Nemo dies in there, we all die."

Murph grew quiet. She stared at Tall Harry. The air between them almost shimmered, and Harry had to reconsider whether or not Murph was a witch and not a Muggle after all. Then she reached into the car and pulled out a small black receiver connected by a spiraling, stretching cord.

"Two-Two-One, this is Zero-Nine on location, please respond, over," Murph said into the receiver. Her eyes never left Tall Harry.

"_Zero-Nine, Two-Two-One. Murphy, is that you? I'm almost—_"

She cut him off. "I understand you've been delayed. Could you give me your new ETA, over?"

There was a pause. Harry heard a car approaching the blockade at the far end of the street. It slowed down noticeably as the empty hiss over the radio ended. _"…copy that. Must have taken a wrong turn. I'll be there in…five minutes, over?_" It was clearly a question.

"Copy that. We'll stand by. Over and out," said Murph.

The car that had slowed for the blockade suddenly sped up, driving right by it to disappear down a cross-street.

Murph—Murphy—dropped the receiver against the door of the car. Her scowl darkened. "Five minutes, Harry. After that, we take our chances. You need to be done or be dead by the time we come in, understand?"

Tall Harry grinned. "As good as I am, Murph, I could have both done by the time you come charging in."

"Five minutes. Watch your ass."

"Why bother? You always do it for me."

Harry watched the two of them draw half a step closer. He waited, holding his breath for a kiss that never happened. Tall Harry backed away with his staff in hand, and wheeled between the police blockade. Mouse gave Harry one last, curious glance before bounding after the other Harry.

Murphy waited until Tall Harry disappeared through Sportsmart's automatic doors before she let loose with a hissing sigh. Her tactical vest seemed to deflate, making her appear even smaller. "Don't you dare die, Dresden, or I swear to God I'll kill you," she murmured after him.

As Harry stood by, lost and invisible, something that the other Harry had said finally broke through his confusion: the Nevernever. The taller Harry had spoken of the Nevernever.

Those elusive, evanescent yellow eyes watching him from the darkness around McGonagall's path haunted Harry still. Just the memory of their hungry stare was enough to give Harry chills.

Without a second thought, Harry ghosted past the police barricade. He had to open the front of his cloak to trigger the automatic door, draping the fabric across his back so he remained invisible to the police. He had the cloak back in place before the cloak's magic broke, and slipped into the store.

That other Harry clearly wasn't much of a wizard, if he drove around in a beat-up old car and collaborated with Muggle police. He would need all the help he could get.

* * *


	5. The White Wizard

**_Chapter Five_**

**_The White Wizard_**

* * *

Echoing footsteps startled Harry, until he realized they were his own. Compared with the commotion outside, the interior of Sportsmart was a veritable tomb. He tried not to dwell on that thought as he ghosted through a phalanx of darkened registers.

The lights were out, which made the shadows longer and deeper. As he pushed further on, the shadows became limbs that reached for Harry until he looked at them, and they straightened into normalcy again. Mannequins wearing jerseys and pads stared facelessly at his passing. A crisp taste of winter hung in the air, making goose bumps of his skin.

He shivered under his cloak. It wasn't just the cold, or the malicious spookiness of the store. Something was wrong. Just…_wrong_. He couldn't put it to words, or even to thoughts, but he felt a general anxiety that grew with each step he took.

Passing an aisle of hockey sticks, Harry came to an open portion of the store. The sprawling windows of the storefront were long out of sight, leaving back a minefield of shadows and displays. Harry reached the end of the aisle, and stopped with a gasp.

The smell hit him first, eliciting a gag that he tried to choke back. It was a noxious cocktail of an odor, one Harry had smelled before, from Cedric, and from Dumbledore. Memories assaulted him, drawn forth by the smell of death. He did his best to push them aside.

The source of the smell sat in the middle of Sportsmart's footwear section. Benches and stacks of shoeboxes had been pushed aside to make room for a giant circle, which had been poured into the carpet in blood. More blood crisscrossed inside the circle, forming what Harry guessed to be a pentagram.

Harry had to guess at the shape because a pile of bodies obscured the floor. At least ten people lay in a heap, layered inside the confines of the circle, their limbs knotted together. There were several bodies in identical polo shirts, probably the store's uniform. A woman lay entwined with a small child. Mother and daughter? Harry could only guess. But he knew the wide, stark emptiness in their eyes.

"Don't do this, Alex," Harry heard a deep, shaking voice say. He tore his eyes from the circle and saw two men standing on the other side. The one that had spoken, Harry recognized as the other Harry—Dresden, Murphy had called him. Harry Dresden. The shadows masked the tall man's glare.

Harry had never seen the other man. And even if he had, he wouldn't have remembered. The man Dresden faced was plain to a fault, with mousy brown hair that thinned and receded, and spectacles perched on a face that lacked any distinctiveness. He wasn't short or tall, perhaps slightly thin, and wore a rumpled suit remarkable only in that it was drenched in red.

It was that blandness that made the man's expression so disturbing. His lips were twisted with a pure delight that dimpled his cheeks. His eyes danced, flickering as though they could not settle on any one sight. When he spoke, there was a chuckle lurking under his words. "I can't stop now, Harry. Don't you see that?"

"You don't want to know what I see, Alex," Dresden said. He held his staff before him, gripped in whitened fingers. "But it's going to be a fraction of what'll happen if you don't stop that spell right now."

The mousy man lifted a dagger that Harry hadn't seen. Its tip drizzled dark liquid as he waved it at Dresden, making the tall wizard flinch. A deep shadow at Dresden's side suddenly bubbled with a basso growl that tickled the pit of Harry's stomach. Harry's hadn't seen Mouse, either, until the great dog raised its hackles to the man.

Broken laughter made the man shake. His dagger remained trained on Harry. "You must see the real truth of things, Harry. I tried to tell you in my clues. I wanted you to appreciate what would come. Only you could, you know. They don't know the real world like we do. I'm a prophet."

"No," said Dresden. "You're Alexander Nemo. You had a rough life, and an even rougher time coming into your magic. It's screwed you up in ways I could never even dream up. And what you're about to do will kill millions of people in an instant, and a lot worse in the long run."

"I'm not crazy, Harry. And I'm not a murderer, either. This," Nemo said, and waved his dagger at the sickening pile, "is a necessary evil. I need them to open the door. The Queens will forgive my actions, you'll see. I'm sure they'll understand. After all, I'm bringing all their lost children home."

"Last chance, Alex. Break the circle," snarled Dresden.

The shiver in Harry's spine became a violent spasm. He nearly shook himself out from under his cloak as the darkness around him began pooling together into otherworldly shapes. As Harry backpedaled, he watched the shapes creep toward Dresden, attracting Mouse's rumbling growl.

"No chance, Harry," Nemo said, and smiled. "Get him."

The shapes exploded forth into diminutive warriors no taller than Harry's waist. Shadow sloughed off them, revealing milky skin and bronze armor. Flaxen hair flowed out from beneath half a dozen battle helmets. With squeaking cries, the warriors charged forward, brandishing stone hammers and axes.

Harry suspected his own expression mirrored Dresden's dumbfounded shock. "Brownies?" Dresden said. "You brought brownies to a fight? You gotta be kidding—"

Dresden's disbelief became a grunt as the brownie horde fell upon him. His left hand shot up in reply. Something glimmered on his wrist below the cusp of his lone black glove.

The wave of brownies crashed against a shimmering wall of bluish energy. Sapphire light cascaded beneath their hammer blows and falling axes, stopping them in midair well away from Dresden. Though the attacks never landed, their force seemed to push at Dresden all the same. He was forced back several steps, keeping his arm raised as the clamoring brownies followed. Mouse trotted backward beside him with teeth bared.

As Harry watched, he realized the brownies' true purpose. They appeared comical in their oversized bronze armor, but they were forcing Dresden back all the same. And in the meantime, Nemo approached the body circle, flicking his dagger to and fro.

With each step Nemo took toward the circle, the _wrongness_ in the room sharpened. The cackling man brandished his arm from his sleeve, and puckered the pale flesh underneath with the tip of his dagger.

"_With this final gift of blood and flesh, I beseech thee._" Nemo's words resonated across the room in spite of the softness of his voice. Some other power carried the words to Harry's ears, making the flesh on his neck crawl up toward his forehead. "_With this final act, let there be no more gateway. Let there be two no more. Demolish the wall, e'er hence let there be one glorious truth!_"

Dresden shouted. He tried angling his staff around the nigh-invisible wall before him. The brownies batted his stick aside. They kept him pinned to the wall of shoes, with Mouse trapped behind his shield, kept at bay by the raining stone blows.

Reflexively, Harry's hand strayed to his back pocket. The grip of his wand brushed his fingertips. One expelliarmus spell would fling the dagger from Nemo's hand…

…and alert the entire Ministry to Harry's presence. One act of illegal underage wizardry—not his first, he recalled with chagrin—would likely turn his life into a circus of bureaucratic buffoonery. He might never get the chance to escape and fulfill Dumbledore's mission.

But as he watched the dagger open nonsensical patterns in Nemo's arm, he knew he had to do something.

Harry sprinted forward as Nemo reached the circle. As the madman pushed his arm over the pile of bodies, Harry tackled him at the waist, throwing both of them to the floor. A patter of Nemo's blood struck the beige carpet outside of the circle's edge.

Nemo screamed, and thrashed. A flailing, bloody fist struck Harry's nose, turning his world into stars. He fell off Nemo and clutched his face. Wet warmth spread into his palm while his eyes sorted themselves out.

As his vision returned, Harry saw with sickening dread a vibrant sheaf of cloth trapped under his legs. His cloak had come loose.

Grasping his arm, Nemo lanced Harry with a smoldering glare. "You!" he snarled.

"Me?" Harry said through his hand.

Nemo shot to his feet, forcing Harry to scramble backwards with just one hand. "Usurper! Glory hound! You seek to make this miracle your own. But the Queens' favor will be mine, and mine alone!"

He thrust his dagger at Harry. The chill in the room became a memory as light pulsed from the blade. Harry flung himself to one side, narrowly dodging the stream of white heat that poured from the dagger. Smoke and embers burst from the carpet where the stream passed, stripping the floor down to scorched concrete.

Harry rolled until a foot stomped down on his shoulder, slamming Harry onto his back. He stared up in breathless horror at Nemo, who grinned at him from behind the luminous blade of his dagger.

"The coming utopia shall brook no meddlers!" Nemo declared, and thrust his dagger.

"_Forzare_!" The word rang out, resonant much in the same way as Nemo's voice had been. Harry had little time to wonder what the word meant before an invisible fist hammered Nemo in the back. Nemo stumbled off of Harry and onto his knees.

Dazed, Harry lifted his heavy head, and saw the glare of Dresden's shimmering wall vanish into thin air. A thin, glistening, sticky sheen clung to every inch of Dresden. The translucent material evaporated off the floor almost as quickly as it drizzled from the end of his long coat. Illegible, unintelligible runes smoldered across the length of his staff. Behind him, Mouse shook a disturbingly empty bronze helmet clutched in his muzzle, spraying more of the stickiness everywhere.

"I tried it the nice way," Dresden said, and leveled the end of his staff at Nemo.

Nemo's cracked smile collapsed, breaking open with a gut-wrenching sob. "Why can't you see it, Harry? We're living in shadows! We walk in dreams!"

Narrowing his eyes, Dresden said, "Now we do it my way."

"_Summer's wrath!_" Nemo screamed, clutching his dagger in both hands.

"_Forzare!_" bellowed Dresden.

Harry closed his eyes, and still he saw the hellish storm flare from Nemo's dagger. The white heat spread toward Dresden until it struck his spell, splitting into two waves that scorched the world to either side of the tall wizard.

Both wizards bolted to opposite sides, each trying to outflank the other. Harry pressed himself to the floor as heat and force crisscrossed the rippling air. There were no curses or hexes that Harry could discern, only raw forces being thrown as fast and as hard as magically possible. Twice he had to jerk out of the way of an errant bolt that cooked the floor where he had been. His evasions took him to the edge of the circle, where the nauseating smell overpowered him.

Nemo bounded past a pedestal for hiking boots, letting it explode against Dresden's spell in his place. The glow of his dagger changed from white to blue. "_Winter's shackles!_" he cried.

A sapphire gale spilled from the tip of Nemo's dagger to envelop Dresden. The wizard flinched, drawing his coat up and around to protect himself. Frost spilled over the battered leather of the coat as the wind glanced off of Dresden.

But the ends of his long legs stuck out from the bottom of the coat, and swallowed the full force of Nemo's spell. Dresden screamed as a thick layer of ice manifested around his feet. He collapsed on his side, dropping his staff.

Nemo cackled. Then he screamed as a large maw clamped around his wrist, dragging his dagger down. Mouse had circled around the magical fray, and now mashed Nemo's wrist in his teeth, and dragged the madman off-balance with a toss of his head.

"Gah!" screamed Nemo. "T-_Trolls' Might!_"

As Harry scrambled to his feet, he saw the tendons in Nemo's bare arm tighten and jump. Harry started to run to the dog's aid, but his first step slid out from under him, and he fell back to the floor. Looking back, he saw a spattered stone axe by his feet, the culprit of his misstep.

Nemo lifted his arm without a hint of effort. Mouse hung from his wrist, front paws wheeling. Snarling, Nemo launched a vicious kick into Mouse's chest, again and again. A sharp crack resounded, turning Mouse's growl into a whimper. But still, the great dog remained clamped to Nemo, with blood frothing from his mouth.

"Hey!" It was Dresden, crawling across the floor with his icy feet dragging behind him. He had abandoned his staff. Now he carried a shorter, thinner stick, like a long wand, which glowed with similar runes as he swung it up in one hand. "_Fuego!_"

A lance of fire leapt from the tip of the long wand and sliced through Nemo's elbow. Even concentrated and focused, the fire's heat made ash of Nemo's arm from the shoulder down, leaving Mouse and Nemo singed, but otherwise fine. Mouse dropped Nemo's hand as he landed, backing away as Nemo screamed and writhed.

Dropping his wand, Dresden rasped, "Hands off my dog."

Nemo's scream warped into a delighted, coughing cackle as he stared down the length of his phantom arm. Smoke ribboned from the stump at his shoulder as he twisted around. He bent down and scooped up Mouse's abandoned prize with his remaining hand.

"_With this final gift of blood and flesh,_" resonated Nemo, "_I beseech thee._" He tossed his disembodied hand, and brayed with laughter.

The hand tumbled in a high arc, one Harry realized would end in the bodies piled upon the circle in the floor. Dresden must have realized it too, for he shouted, "No!"

Harry whirled onto his hands and knees. Dresden's barked command to Nemo echoed at the back of his mind—_Break the circle._ He didn't know for certain what the circle would do should Nemo's hand join the macabre offerings, but he knew he couldn't allow it.

Purely on instinct, Harry grasped the stone axe at his feet. He threw himself across the floor, rolling, tumbling, making every ache and bruise on his body cry out. The circle's edge came just into reach as the hand arced over him. With a shout, Harry swung the hand axe across his body and buried its head in the floor, bisecting the bloody line in the carpet.

There came a loud _pop_ in his ears, like a sharp drop in air pressure. The hairs in his arm stood on end. Nemo's disembodied hand flopped onto the back of the topmost corpse and rolled off, bouncing down to touch Harry's axe, all without effect.

A raw howl tore from Nemo's throat as he collapsed. He clawed at his face, sobbing into his remaining hand, until a body check from Mouse sprawled him onto his stomach.

Walking on thawed, unsteady legs, Dresden staggered to Mouse's side. "Good boy," he said, and scratched the shaggy dog's ears. Then, almost casually, he crossed Nemo's face with his heel, arresting the madman's sobs.

Harry stared at the scorched hand splayed atop the stone axe head. Shuddering, he released the axe, and fell onto his back, panting. New twinges emerged from the receding adrenal rush. He ached, and breathed, until a tall silhouette and its shaggy companion loomed above him.

"That was some quick thinking, kid," Dresden said as he offered Harry a hand. "Don't let it go to your head, but you just saved this whole city. Maybe even the world."

"Er, right," Harry said, and lurched to his feet with Dresden's help.

Dresden scrutinized Harry, lingering on his forehead. "Did you get trapped in the store? As far as I can tell, you're the only survivor so far."

"You're more right than you know, hoss." The sudden emergence of Ebenezer McCoy startled Harry. He whirled around, and saw the air shimmer with dispelling invisibility.

McCoy and McGonagall both stood at the edge of the battlefield. How long they had been present and unseen, Harry didn't know, and didn't care to know. Anger welled from the pit of Harry's stomach to climb up his throat in a hot surge.

Nodding to the two of them, McCoy said, "Harry Dresden, meet Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. He's your new student, 'Professor.' "

* * *


	6. An Inconvenient Favor

_**Chapter Six**_

_**An Inconvenient Favor**_

* * *

Harry squirmed beneath Dresden's unblinking stare. Despite Dresden's instructions, and despite McGonagall's assurances, he very much wanted to look away from the other wizard's dark eyes. It was only his defiant sense of pride that kept Harry's eyes locked in the odd contest.

Dresden's stare pressed harder. Harry imagined a pressure against his eyes, as though something invisible were trying to push into him. Tension wrinkled around Dresden's eyes, and the imagined pressure increased.

Finally, gasping, Dresden broke Harry's gaze, and rubbed his face. "I don't believe it," the older wizard muttered. "That's impossible. How…?"

Standing behind him, McCoy said, "I told you it wouldn't work, hoss. It never does for their kind."

Harry scowled, wondering what "their kind" meant, while Dresden backed away toward his apartment's postage stamp of a kitchen. "Anybody want a Coke?" the tall wizard asked.

Harry, McGonagall, and McCoy had apparated from the horrific scene at the Sportsmart before the police had burst onto the scene. Dresden had stayed, presumably to explain the mess to his friend Murphy, and to ensure that Nemo was seen to. Harry had waited for hours outside of the old boardinghouse with the older pair, until Dresden's car had sputtered up to the curb, barely beating the night back to his apartment.

Dresden passed out an armful of Cokes, saving the last can for himself. He pressed the cold can to the side of his head. A sigh of relief whistled through his nose as he sank into the old, worn couch in front of the cold fireplace. "Okay, fine. Let's put aside all the impossible stuff you've told me so far, and the fact that, for some reason, I can't gaze the kid. You could have told me you were coming to town, sir," he said to Ebenezer.

Sinking into an overstuffed chair next to the couch, Ebenezer said, "Didn't know I was coming until this morning. Quite the mess you had brewing here, too."

As the amicably tense conversation between the two strange wizards continued, Harry let his attention wander throughout Dresden's impossibly small basement apartment. The majority of the candlelit apartment was one room, whose function changed depending on which direction Harry looked. The back wall was a stark kitchenette, the only appliance of which being an ice box that used actual ice. The living room appeared to have been furnished by at least six yard sales, and was decorated with movie posters and tapestries with frayed edges. There was only one other door in the apartment, and Harry assumed it led to a bedroom. Given the rest of the furnishings, he wondered if Dresden could even afford a bed to put in it.

"What were you doing here, anyway? Just standing around, watching me bust my hump to save the day?" Dresden asked, interrupting Harry's mental tour. "Nemo was—"

McCoy snorted. "I know plenty well what was going on. Better than you do, I'd wager. I recognized the spell's energies the moment we arrived. Had to leave Minnie and the boy before I even got the chance to explain."

"Wait. You recognized what Nemo was trying to pull off?" Dresden asked.

"It's happened before," said McCoy. "Have you ever heard of Roanoke?"

Harry hadn't, but Dresden must have, for he paused, and then said, "Oh."

"And naturally, I had to follow, or risk losing our only guide here," McGonagall chimed in. "I left Mister Potter his invisibility cloak, hoping it would encourage him to remain out of sight and out of trouble, and then I apparated after Ebenezer." Her reproachful look found Harry on the carpet as she added, "I see I should have known better."

Harry felt his indignation rising up his throat, but Dresden beat him to the punch. "Hey, lay off the kid," he said. "Thanks to him, we're not up to our eyeballs in Nevernever right now. What were you doing to stop Nemo, anyway?"

"She helped me track down and disrupt one of the other four anchor points of his spell," McCoy answered coolly. "Then we apparated to you as quick as we could, and found the both of you."

Dresden leaned back into his seat. "Oh," he said again, deflating.

"Which is maybe what you should have done, instead of charging off like a white knight," McCoy continued. "Or maybe you could have asked another Warden to cover one of the other anchor points for you, just in case you weren't quick enough. That is, if you didn't have to be such a maverick all the time."

Dresden opened his Coke. "I always fancied myself more of a Goose," he said, before draining half his can. Then he frowned, belched, and added, "I'm sorry. You said you 'apparated?' Is that a thing?"

"Apparation is one of our chief means of magical, personal transport," McGonagall explained in her most didactic tone.

"Oh, of course," Dresden said. "Apparation. That must be the magical bus that takes you around that magical world I've never heard of before because it's a secret that's almost as old as the White Council itself. 'That' apparation."

"Actually, that would be the Knight Bus," Harry said, feeling impatient and ignored.

"The night bus?" Dresden echoed, confused.

"Yes," Harry snapped, suddenly rising to his feet. "The Knight Bus. And if I thought they would come out this far, I would stick out my wand and head back to London right now! Anything would be better than sitting in another living room and drinking with another well-meaning wizard who can't help us in the slightest!"

McCoy and McGonagall remained silent. Dresden's brows knit together, and he said, "Um…"

Harry swept his glare to McGonagall. "Professor, I don't even know why you've dragged me halfway around the world for this. We've been running around all day and gotten nowhere for it. Voldemort isn't going to wait around while you force me back to Hogwarts!"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Dresden said. "What's a Voldymort?"

"Voldemort! He's a dark wizard!" Harry snapped, whirling on Dresden. "How do you not…? He's the most powerful dark wizard in the world! His minions are gathering right now, bullying people into hiding or cursing them into obedience!"

Dresden held up his hands. "Easy there, Goggles. I've handled a few warlocks in my time."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "You've never seen anything like Voldemort. He's a hundred times more powerful than that nutter who almost got you today. If you barely survived that little scuffle, you wouldn't last two seconds against one Death Eater, let alone Voldemort himself."

It was Dresden's turn to rise in anger. The wizard used every inch of his considerable height to press his glare down upon Harry as he said, "Let me tell you what I can handle, kid. I've held my own against Fairie queens. Okay? I've toasted vampires all flavors like they were freaking marshmallows. I've blasted demons like dominos. I've choked a fallen angel. I've busted up necromancers and ridden dinosaurs. Okay, 'a' dinosaur. The point being?" He drew himself up even taller, puffing as he said, "Don't tell me what I can and cannot goddamn handle. Comprende?"

The thought of a Cornish pixie with a crown almost made Harry laugh. Almost. "Maybe you White Council blokes think you're tough. But I'm the only one who can stop him."

Dresden snorted. "Oh, yeah? Well, if this Volvo-mart is so tough, how are you going to stop him? Who's going to keep you alive long enough to take him down, Oh-Chosen-One?"

McCoy spoke up in a soft voice. "That'd be you, hoss."

"Damn right, me," said Dresden. Then, "Wait. What?"

Swirling his can of soda, McCoy explained, "Minnie here is Headmistress of a…a wizard academy."

"Acting Headmistress," McGonagall said primly.

"And she's looking for a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Someone to teach kids like Mister Potter how to deal with Fairie queens, and demons, and vampires, and dinosaurs," McCoy continued with a twinkle in his eye. "But more importantly, she needs someone who can look after young Mister Potter when she can't. She needs someone who isn't invested in this hidden war the Ministry has going on under its nose. Someone who can't be corrupted by these Death Eater warlocks. Someone she can trust. Naturally, I thought of you."

Dresden shook his head. "Defense against the what-what? No. Sir, no. This is insane. Even if I believed all of this—which I'm still not sure I do—I have duties here. Warden duties. Courtesy of the secret wizard government I'm already dealing with, thank you very much. And I have a brand-new apprentice now."

McCoy shrugged. "Well, just think of this as getting a few more. A whole castleful of apprentices, in fact."

"No. I can't—it's a castle?" Dresden shook his head again, and began to pace the length of the fireplace. "It doesn't matter. Even if there wasn't the war to consider, and my apprentice, I've still got a full-and-a-half time job here, and…seriously? It's a castle?" he said, dropping his hands.

"Parapets and everything," McCoy said.

Dresden paused, and then said, "No. Ebenezer, I couldn't teach water to be wet. I still don't know what I'm going to do with Molly. Considering the way I was taught…?"

"Hoss," McCoy said slowly, "I know you can do this. And more to the point, I know you're going to do this."

"Yeah? Why is that?"

"Because I'm asking you to," said McCoy.

Harry watched Dresden's face fall slowly from confusion, and then pucker, as though besieged with lemons. Dresden's mouth opened and closed several times without words, before he finally managed to say, "That's low."

McCoy nodded. "I know it. I'm asking you to do this because you're the only person 'I' trust to help Minnie."

"It's still low," grumbled Dresden. He sat back in his chair and crumpled his empty Coke can. "So, does someone want to tell me more about this job I've 'volunteered' for?"

"You'll be accompanying Mister Potter back to Hogwarts—" began McGonagall.

"Hogwarts?" blurted Dresden. "Seriously? Hog-warts?"

Harry, McCoy, and McGonagall glared at Dresden hard enough to prick Mouse's ears. The dog lifted a sleepy eye long enough to see his owner cowed back into his seat. "Sorry," mumbled Dresden.

"…back to Hogwarts," continued a curt McGonagall, "at the end of summer. I'll arrange for a Portkey—"

It was Harry's turn to interrupt. He lurched to his feet, feeling his stomach shrivel with a horrifying thought. "Excuse me, Professor," he said, his crumbling patience a poor veil for his outrage. "You don't mean that I'm to spend my summer here, do you?"

"That is exactly what I mean, Potter," McGonagall said, just as curt to Harry as she had been to Dresden.

The thought of an entire summer as a stranger in a strange land crushed Harry. He had hoped McGonagall's trace spell trickery wouldn't mean a total loss of progress for the summer. Even if he couldn't go anywhere himself, he could still coordinate with Ron and Hermione, and plan, and prepare. There was only so much they could do by coded owls, perhaps less, given that McGonagall had broken their code so easily.

"But Professor, I'll…miss the wedding," Harry protested lamely. "Er, Bill and Fleur's wedding. If I could just—"

"You will remain here, Potter," McGonagall said firmly. Her face softened a fraction as she added, "I am sorry, but I'm afraid the Weasleys will have to wait until the winter break for your congratulations. The Burrow is simply too well known to our enemies.

Harry could hear the apology in her voice, and see it in her tired eyes, and he didn't care. He stormed to the heavy security door of the apartment. It took a severe coaxing from his shoulder to wrench the metal door open. His teeth buzzed with unseen force as he rushed up the concrete stairs, slamming the door shut behind him.

Outside, the night air felt heavy and warm. Sickly yellow light clung to the sky, the glow from the twinkling buildings in the distance. Harry glared at the strange skyline, trying through force of will to turn it into London, or better still, the homey, dilapidated farmhouse where his friends waited for him. Despite his fervency, Chicago remained Chicago, and grossly unaware of his frustration.

He wished he could simply hop on his broom and fly. He wished he could tell McGonagall of the mission Dumbledore had entrusted to him. He wanted to believe that these strange wizards of the White Council—hardly wizards at all!—could be trusted, or even relied upon, to help him stop Voldemort.

But in the end, he could do nothing of the sort. The day had started out so well, with the promise of joining Ron and Hermione to start their quest for the Horcruxes. And not one thing had gone right since then. Not one good thing had happened throughout that terrible day.

"Hello?"

Harry looked up from his shoes with a start. A tall, slender silhouette was walking up to the boardinghouse. The glow of the streetlight halved her face in shadow. She had long legs that rose up into cutoff shorts, and a light, thin cotton shirt. Harry wondered if the light played tricks with her hair, for she had sweeping shocks of white and pink combed down over one eye. The other eye twinkled curiously at Harry.

"Hi," he said.

She stopped several lengths away, eyeing him. "Are you waiting for Harry? Are you a friend of his?" the girl asked. She kept her tone light, but the suspicion was impossible to miss.

Harry was confused for a second, until he realized who she meant. "Prof…er, Mister Dresden? Yeah, I guess. He's…helping me."

The girl smiled at Harry. "You sound a little lost."

"You have no idea," he told her earnestly.

"I love the accent, by the way."

He frowned. "Thanks, I suppose."

She lessened the distance between them with tentative steps. Her arms crossed under her chest. As she passed under a large patch of street light, Harry spied the heavy backpack hanging from her shoulders. "He's really good at it, you know."

Harry's frown deepened. "I'm sorry?"

"Helping people," the girl explained. "Harry. He's really, really good at it. He's helped me a lot, actually. He's kind of my teacher."

"Mine, too," Harry said sullenly.

At that, the girl brightened. "Really? Wow! Harry didn't say anything to me about a new apprentice! That's great! Maybe he could open up his own tutorial workshop, or something." She closed the gap between them, and offered Harry her hand. She smelled of roses, and her smile chased the night away. "My name's Molly."

"…Harry. Harry Potter." Harry took the hand, and wondered if perhaps one good thing hadn't happened throughout that terrible day.

"Seriously, great accent. Where can I get one?"

* * *


	7. A Birthday Surprise

_Chapter Seven  
__A Birthday Surprise_

* * *

Molly came over every day of Harry's first week in Chicago. She would arrive early in the morning for lessons with Dresden, which typically didn't start until close to noon, when Dresden rose from his cramped bedroom. The older wizard pleaded fatigue from his recent case for his late rising, earning secretive smirks and rolled eyes from Molly.

Harry awoke each morning to the screech of the metal door that would knock him off of Dresden's couch. Molly would smile, and wedge the door shut, and offer Mouse his pat on the head as he loped to the door to nuzzle her leg. This would give Harry enough time to collect his glasses from the end table, so he could see Molly peering over the back of the couch and smiling at his tangle of blankets.

"Morning, Goggles. Feeling pip-pip and tip-top today?" she would say.

He would grumble in reply, "Morning, Giantess. Come down from your beanstalk, have you?"

But Harry didn't mind the early rousting. It gave him someone to talk to over breakfast. As much as Harry had come to like Mouse, he felt a powerful need for company of the non-furry variety. His friends, and even his owl, were half a world away. Each day he spent away from the Burrow ached like an old bruise. Spending time with Molly made that ache tolerable.

As they shared breakfasts of cereal and Coke, they would talk, mostly about magic. Molly had only discovered her power the previous year, much later in her life than Harry had. Whenever he asked her about the experience, she would fidget, and change the topic back to Harry. He didn't mind her reluctance, either, because she seemed absolutely fascinated with everything he knew about magic. For the first time since his eleventh birthday, Harry found himself the more knowledgeable of a pair of magic-users.

"Seriously? A castle?" Molly said, and nibbled on dry Cheerios from the edge of Harry's bowl. "You go to school in a castle?"

Harry shook his head. "You believe in magic, but not in castles?"

She smirked over the rim of her Coke can. "I think you're yanking my chain. You almost had me going, right up until the part with the moving staircases. What would be the point? Stairs are supposed to go where you need them to go, not just 'wherever.' That's dumb."

"Maybe your stairs are just lazy," Harry countered, straight-faced. "Your stairs only go one place. What's the use in that? I've got loads of places I need to go."

The pleasant conversation would continue until Dresden emerged from his bedroom. Harry's pleasant mood quickly soured in the tall wizard's presence. The table would lapse into uncomfortable silence as Dresden ate. Then Molly's lessons would begin.

Dresden and Molly disappeared down into a trap door, which was kept hidden beneath one of the dozen throw rugs in the apartment. At first, Harry had tried putting his ear to the door to listen in, but the old wood muffled the lesson into unintelligible mumblings. Once or twice he heard a loud _bang_ emerge from the subbasement. But when he knocked on the trap door, no one answered, and the mumblings continued. The mysterious pair would not emerge until late afternoon, when Dresden would drive Molly home.

Harry spent most of his week pacing the inside of the apartment. He picked at the bookshelf of paperbacks without actually reading anything. He wrote out half-hearted attempts at letters to Hermione, which he knew he could not send, only to crumple them in frustration halfway through. And he pretended to be asleep on the couch when Dresden screeched through the crooked door late at night.

The last week of July dwindled, until the last day was upon him. Harry wanted to pretend that he had not noticed, but he couldn't even fool himself. Not since his days in the cupboard had Harry felt so alone. McGonagall had abandoned him, and worse, she had stopped his mission to destroy Voldemort before it had ever really begun. Harry seethed at the thought of the meddling professor. He knew he would never forgive her for stranding him there.

That day, Harry awoke late, this time to Dresden emerging early from his bedroom. "Wake up and dress up, kid," Dresden said to the still-groggy Harry. "I think it's high time we get you out of here and stretch your legs. What do you say?"

Harry grumbled, and showered, which was miserable because Dresden never seemed to have any hot water left. Then he dressed, and followed Dresden and Mouse out to the cramped confines of Dresden's old beetle in silence. Dresden hardly glanced over at Harry, and seemed content to keep the silence while Mouse continued his midmorning nap on the back seat.

They drove across Chicago to a quaint suburban neighborhood, where the houses seemed like they were miles apart in comparison to the postage stamp yards of Privet Drive. The beetle stopped outside of the nicest of the quaint two-story houses. As they squeezed out of the car, Harry finally asked, "Where are we?"

"Molly's house," said Dresden, as he attached Mouse's lead. "I need to talk to her parents. I figured that, since the two of you have been getting so chummy over the last week, you could make nice while her mother yells at me."

Before Harry could wonder what he meant, they were at the door. The bell chimed merrily, and footsteps thundered on the other side. Then the door slivered open, with no one on the other side.

Harry peered through the crack of the door, confused, until Dresden bent down and addressed the bottom of the door. "Good morning, Mister Carpenter. Are either of your parents around?"

A little boy with sandy blond hair threw open the door. His beaming smile was at level with Harry's knee as the boy turned back to the house and hollered, "Mom! Other Harry's here!"

A moment later, the little boy scampered back, making room for a tall, older woman with strong features to come to the door. Except for her blonde hair and the difference in age, she was a dead ringer for Molly. "Harry," she said to Dresden in a voice that was almost friendly.

Turning her gaze, she fixed Harry with a look that gave him chills. The woman possessed an aura that wasn't any magic Harry knew, but was just as potent. He shivered at the cold steel behind her eyes as she said, "And are you the young man Molly has been talking so much about?"

It was all Harry could do to keep his voice steady as he raised his hand. "Harry. Harry Potter, ma'am."

"Charity Carpenter," the woman said. She turned her long look back upon Dresden, and then stepped back. "Won't you both come in? Wipe your feet."

Harry followed the tall warden into the house, and spent half a minute scraping his sneakers against the mat in the entryway. He saw Dresden do the same, and even Mouse shuffled his paws on the mat before trotting forward onto the carpet.

The house's interior matched its exterior in quality and quaintness. The white walls and wooden trim had weathered quite a number of children over the years. Harry could tell by the motionless Muggle pictures on the walls, all of them portraits or family photos, all of them with enough children to give the Weasley family a run for its money. On the far wall, he saw Molly progress from a grinning Primary Schooler to a surly teenager with dyed black hair just by looking down the wall.

The little boy who had answered the door peered out from behind Charity's leg. "You brought another Harry? How many are there?" he asked Dresden.

Dresden bent down and ruffled the boy's hair. "Well, there's at least three, I guess," he said, and laughed with the boy.

A curt clearing of Charity's throat silenced the both of them. "Harry," she said, calling upon a motherly tone that made Harry's spine straighten quicker than Aunt Petunia's nagging ever could. "Go play. Mister Dresden and I need to speak."

As the little Harry rushed up the stairs, he had to swerve to avoid Molly, who tramped down the stairs wearing combat boots and a summer dress. Her white and pink hair was swept back behind her ears. "Harry? Boss? I thought I heard you guys down here. What's going on?"

"Kitchen," said Charity, silencing Dresden and Harry before either could draw breath.

The rest followed Charity down the hall. Molly asked Harry a silent question, to which he shrugged. He didn't know any more than she did, a situation that was becoming unbearably familiar to him.

Charity led them under a prominent wooden crucifix and into the kitchen, which seemed spacious enough for two families. A trio of children ranging from older than the little Harry to younger than Molly sat on stools at the counter, all clamoring for a fresh sheet of cookies, which was being removed from the oven by a large man with sandy blond hair.

"Harry," the man said to Dresden in greeting. His trim beard split for a genuine smile. As he straightened, he struck Harry with his size. The man stood only a few inches shorter than Dresden, but packed considerably more muscle, which he kept under a pressed flannel shirt. Harry had to wonder if everyone in Chicago was so tall, and how they managed to fit in anything, as he followed Dresden around the counter to shake hands with the man.

"Michael," Dresden said, trading grips and smiles with the man. "Isn't it a little early for cookies?"

Michael's smile dimmed as his wife threw cross looks at him around Dresden. "I thought a snack might make this more pleasant. 'Some' people are more receptive when they have chocolate," he added in a graveyard whisper.

"Don't you two start conspiring against me," Charity scolded them. "Especially not in front of the children. I won't have it. And I've already decided, Harry, so you and your friend had best take a cookie and be on your way."

Molly exchanged a confused look with Harry. She stood behind her younger siblings on the stools, and said, "Vamoose, rug-rats. The grownups need to talk for a minute." She waited until each of them had snatched a cookie from the tray and scampered, giggling, from the kitchen. Then she turned to her mother and said, "Decided what?"

Charity's face became a wall. "Never mind what. There doesn't need to be a discussion, because she isn't going. It's as simple as that."

Molly's confusion became alarm. "Wait. Who's not going where?"

"Charity," Michael said softly, and rested a hand on her shoulder.

She threw her husband's hand aside and stormed to the sink. "No, Michael," she said in a tight, quavering voice that somehow rang louder than a shout. She began rattling the sink's dirty dishes, burying her attentions in soapy water.

Harry stepped back from the tense exchange. He saw Molly try to speak again, but Dresden stopped her with a look. The tall wizard placed Mouse's lead in her hand, and said, "Why don't you two take Mouse out back? He looks like he could use some air."

As Mouse nuzzled her leg, Molly gaped at Dresden. "Harry, that's not fair! If this is something about me, I deserve to—"

"Vamoose, rug-rats," Dresden told Molly and Harry with an infuriating smile. "The grownups need to talk for a minute."

Harry watched Molly's neck darken to match the pink in her hair. Then he followed her tromping footsteps out the back door, which he darted through the instant before Molly slammed it hard enough to rattle its glass. He and Mouse watched her fume at the curtained windows.

"Of all the unbelievable… This is exactly why I moved out!" she snarled, and kicked a softball sitting on the deck.

Harry had experience with being excluded from meetings, and knew better than to sulk. He hushed Molly with a gesture, and then pulled a long, pink string out of his pocket. His Extendable Ear was one of the few things he had been carrying on him when McGonagall had collected him, and consequently one of his few remaining possessions. He unraveled the Ear and fed its end through the crack of the door.

"—just got her back." Charity's voice rang through the Extendable Ear, as clear as if they had been sitting in the kitchen. Molly gasped in astonishment, making Harry smile as he gestured her to tilt her head toward the Ear's end. "And now you want to take her away again? Just like that?"

"I don't want to take anyone anywhere!" Dresden insisted. "This isn't something I want to do, Charity, even if you were one hundred and ten percent on-board with the idea. But the fact is that she goes where I go now. Or did you forget that my head is on the chopping block too?"

It must have been a profoundly wrong thing that Dresden had said, for dead silence followed through the Extendable Ear. Harry glanced up at Molly, and found her ruddy anger had become whitish shock. She staggered back from the ear, rubbing at her mouth, as if to hide her grimace.

Then the door opened. Harry jerked the pink string back and smiled awkwardly at Michael, who loomed in the doorway. He looked at his daughter's mute horror, and then offered Harry a wan smile and a plate of fresh cookies. "You two shouldn't be listening to this," he said, more advisory than scolding.

"Sorry," Harry stammered, winding up the Extendable Ear as fast as he could.

Michael's smile remained steadfast. He nodded, and then gently closed the door.

When Harry turned, Molly was already halfway across the yard. Mouse stared up at Harry with soulful eyes, and then picked up his lead with his teeth and padded to a comfortable spot on the deck, where he proceeded to nap with gusto. Helpless, Harry followed Molly into the yard.

She led Harry to the base of an old, tall tree. A sturdy ladder had been fixed to the tree, and led up to a tree house, which was half-masked in branches. Molly's hands wrung the ladder as she stared up at the simple wooden house above them. "My dad built this for me when I was little," she said, her voice undercut with trembling. "When the other munchkins came along, he kept adding to it, and fixing it up."

"It's nice," Harry said hesitantly.

"Mom just…she still sees that little girl waving to her from the railing up there. She does." Molly glanced back at Harry with glistening eyes. "I'm going to be eighteen next year. What's she going to do when I'm…? I mean, she keeps treating me like I'm still…"

Harry shrugged. "I understand, believe me," he said, and thought of McGonagall, and of Mrs. Weasley's comforting, exasperating coddling. He thought of Dumbledore, of the old wizard's constant, obfuscating, mysterious ways, and felt heavy with the memory. "I suppose I'm lucky," he muttered. "Where I come from, we come of age at seventeen."

Then a thought struck Harry. He was seventeen today. He was an adult, and no longer restricted by the Ministry's monitoring charms. Pulling his wand from his back pocket, Harry waved it over the plate of cookies. "Wingardium Leviosa," he incanted.

Molly jumped back as the plate levitated past her head. The plate rose smoothly to the treetop, and then sidled into the tree house, out of sight. "That was incredible," she said, breathless. "What is that? Is that a wand? Like, an honest-to-God magic wand? I knew Harry was full of crap when he told me they didn't work like that."

Harry was glad to see her smile again. "Come on," he said, and grasped the ladder. "If we're going to be left in the dark, we may as well have something to eat."

They followed the cookies up, Harry before Molly in deference to her dress. The tree house was sturdier and more spacious than Harry imagined it would be, and easily accommodated the both of them. They sat at either side of the tree house door and emptied the plate of cookies while watching the kitchen curtains.

Taking the last cookie, Molly let her head bounce against the doorframe and sighed. Her eyes wandered from the house back to Harry's wand, which rested next to his hip. "Seriously, how did you get so good at that? I've never seen such a smooth ascent on anything. I don't think even Harry is that good with wind magic."

Harry shrugged. "It was one of the first charms I ever learned, actually."

"Back at Hog-Warts, right?" Molly gathered her legs up under her dress, so that only the tips of her boots peeked out. She hugged her knees to her chest, and stared at some distant point past Harry's head and through the walls of the tree house. "It sounds amazing there, the way you describe it. It sounds perfect."

Harry pulled his legs in through the door, leaning against the wall as Molly did. "Well, it's not perfect. But it's…home. As much of a home as I've ever had, at any rate." Before he could stop himself, he added, "And right now I wish I didn't have to go back."

"Why?" Molly asked, wiping chocolate from the corner of her mouth.

"Because it isn't safe, for me or for my friends. Because Dumbledore is gone, but his mission isn't."

"What mission? What's a 'dumble door?' "

He groaned. How could he possibly explain to someone who had never heard of the Ministry, or of Voldemort? "There are… Do you have dark wizards here?" he asked, suddenly aware of how little he knew of Molly's world. "People who use magic to hurt other people?"

The question seemed to shock Molly. She tightened her arms around her knees, and said, "Uh, yeah. Yeah, we do. They're called 'warlocks.' "

"Yeah. Well, we have 'warlocks' like you wouldn't believe, called Death Eaters. They bully and curse people into serving them, and they kill anyone brave enough to stand against them. I have to find them, and stop them. I have to stop them. But I can't do that at Hogwarts."

Molly was quiet for a moment. She stared at her dress, the white half of her hair falling into her eyes. Then, in a mousy voice, she said, "You know, not every warlock is bad. A lot of them are just confused, and scared."

Harry looked up in surprise. "What?" he snapped.

She rocked back at his tone. "I'm just saying," she stammered, "that not every warlock means to be bad. You know, not everybody gets a castle to learn this stuff in. Some people have to figure it out on their own, and they try to help the people they love, and they just…they just…"

The very idea boiled in Harry's blood. "The head Death Eater's name is Voldemort. He killed my parents. He gave me this when I was just a baby." He tapped the scar on his forehead. "Do you want to tell me that he's not bad?"

Her ears turned pink. "I didn't mean… Forget it. I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Harry calmed down with a deep breath. He had to remind himself that Molly didn't know. He wasn't 'The Famous Harry Potter' to her, something for which he should have been grateful. "No. I'm sorry. I just…I have to stop them. I have to stop Voldemort, or he'll keep killing everyone I care about."

They stewed in silence again, until Molly said, "You have friends at Hog-Warts?"

"Mmn," Harry said, and nodded.

Molly fidgeted. "You have a girlfriend?" she asked.

Harry grunted. "Yeah. Only…no. I don't know. I want to. But she would be in too much danger. It wouldn't be safe for her." The thought knitted his brows together. He forced himself to laugh as he said, "This isn't quite how I imagined I'd be spending my birthday."

He looked up to see Molly wipe an odd expression from her face. "It's your birthday today?" she asked, sounding relieved for the change in topic. "Why didn't you say anything? Harry didn't say anything about it."

"I didn't tell anybody," Harry said. "Why bother? I don't want a fuss, especially not here, and not from Professor Dresden. No offense, but the only thing I want is to leave here."

Molly chuckled. "'Professor Dresden.' That gets funnier every time I hear it." Then she sobered, and crawled forward on her hands and knees, her boot tips clomping on the planks. "Come on. There's gotta be something you want, Goggles. Everybody wants something on their birthday."

Harry's gaze drifted back out the door, and skipped across suburban rooftops toward the horizon. "I want lots of things," he admitted. "But I'm not going to get any of them, so there's no point in wishing, is there?"

Molly sat down next to him, and rested her head against the wall with a long sigh. "You don't really get the point of wishing, do you?"

He shrugged.

"Okay. Let's start small. Close your eyes," she instructed him.

Harry gave her an odd look, which was met with her stern expectance until he did as she commanded. He closed his eyes and settled back against the wall, feeling foolish as he did.

"Good. Now, you remember that girl? Miss 'Maybe-Yes-Maybe-No? I want you to picture her in your head. Think hard."

Ginny's face came to him at once. He saw her freckled smile turn to him, swishing her ginger hair as it did. A wave of homesickness washed over him as he watched her fade into his thoughts. "Yeah?" he told Molly, talking around an unexpected lump in his throat.

"Good."

Something soft brushed against his lips. Through closed eyes, he saw Ginny's face lean into his, kissing him gently, hesitantly. Startled, he kissed back. He savored the sensation of her lips against his, and the smell of her hair, as he tried with all his might not to notice that Ginny tasted like chocolate chip cookies.

The kiss ended. Harry opened his eyes, and saw Molly, sitting back in her original spot. A cheshire smile shone in her face. "Happy birthday," she murmured.

"Thanks," he mumbled. His heart raced.

A shout from below the tree house made both of them jump. "Molly! Come down here," Charity hollered.

"You too, Goggles," Dresden's voice added.

Harry shared a guilty look with Molly before following her down the ladder. Dresden waited for them at the bottom, holding Mouse by the lead. Michael and Charity were there as well. The former was straight-faced, whereas the latter did nothing to hide her displeasure.

"Oh, I know that look," Molly said, recoiling from her mother as she jumped off the ladder. "Whatever it is, it was Harry's fault."

"Which Harry?" Dresden asked with a small smile.

"Whichever one the blame sticks to," Molly said at once.

"Good answer," said Dresden.

Charity cleared her throat, silencing the lot of them. She fixed her daughter with a stern look, and said, "Molly, Harry will be going to England in the fall. It seems he's taken a teaching position at a school there without even considering his responsibilities here first."

The news rocked Molly. "Wait, what? You mean, Harry is… You're… You can't!" she cried to Dresden. Whirling upon Harry, she said, "You knew about this? When you said Harry was going to teach you, I thought that meant you were going to be here for a while, not that you were taking him back with you!"

"Easy, Grasshopper," Dresden said, and added, "It wasn't exactly my choice," with a sidelong glare that Charity ignored.

"We know how important your studies with Harry are," said Michael. "That's why, after discussing the options, we've decided that you'll be going with him. You'll be spending the year with him in England, going to school there—"

"A school which we apparently know nothing about," Charity added curtly.

Molly was struck dumb by the news. She stared at Dresden, who self-consciously straightened the collar of his unseasonable duster. "I'm…I'm going to Hog-Warts?" she said. "I get to go to magic school?"

"It's you and me against the Brits, Grasshopper. Do you think you're up to it?" Dresden asked her.

When Molly's dumbfounded look turned to him, Harry could only shrug. "Mind the stairs," he said, and offered her an uneasy smile.

* * *


	8. The Ghost of the Burrow

_**Chapter Eight**_

_**The Ghost of the Burrow**_

* * *

Harry and Molly were interrupted from their breakfast routine one August morning by Dresden, who plopped a brown paper parcel between them on the table. Dresden had just come in from taking Mouse outside, and had not yet removed the big dog's lead, as he gestured to the parcel.

Checking her wristwatch, Molly said, "It's a little early for the mail, isn't it, Boss?"

"That didn't come in the mail," Dresden said in a measured tone. "An owl dropped that on me."

Harry perked at the news. He snatched up the parcel. It was small, but felt heavier than it looked. His name was written in neatly quilled lettering on the top. "It's for me," he said.

Molly loomed over his shoulder as he tore at the packaging. "I thought you were incognito, Goggles. Who's sending you care packages?"

"Let me say that again," Dresden said slowly. "An 'owl' dropped that on me. An owl. Like the bird."

Inside the parcel, Harry found a small, heavy object wrapped in more brown paper, which he set aside. Included with the object were two square envelopes, both inscribed in the same neat quillwork on the parcel. One was addressed to Professor Dresden. The other was addressed to Harry.

When Harry opened his envelope, he found a short, handwritten note:

_The Leaky Cauldron_

_ Noon (your time)_

_ Wear your cloak_

_ ~MM_

_ PS: Please do not let Professor Dresden touch the medallion until it is time._

"An owl," Dresden said, and shucked his duster on the coat rack by the door. "What the hell?"

Then Dresden settled down to the table to open and read his own note. Harry watched with no small sense of satisfaction as the tall wizard's face progressed from annoyance to bafflement to outright confusion.

Finally, Dresden leaned back in his chair, scratched his head with the envelope, and said again, "What the hell?"

Harry spent the morning fidgeting with anticipation while Dresden and Molly prepared for the outing. By the time the other two had sorted themselves, Harry stood by the table with his wand in his back pocket and his invisibility cloak folded over his arm.

"Okay, let's see what we've got," said Dresden. He unwrapped the heavy object, careful not to touch it, as Harry cautioned him. The brown paper gave way to a small medallion made of brass with a leather cord through its loop. The image of a phoenix graced the front of the medallion, its wings spread, and its beak open as if to sing.

Molly peered over Harry's shoulder. "What's with the chicken-hawk?"

"The note said that this little bauble would take us to the meeting spot," Dresden said, and tested the medallion's weight, letting it sit in its paper atop his palm. "It probably works like a tracking spell. It'll tug us in the right direction until we're where we need to be."

Harry suppressed a smile as Dresden laid the medallion and paper on the table. "We all need to touch it together. Like this," he said, and held his fingertips just above the medallion's face, "on the count of three. And hold on."

As Harry counted, Molly asked, "Where do you think it'll lead—?"

At "three," they touched the medallion. Harry felt the familiar presence of the Portus spell grab his spine and suck him forward through his navel. Color and form whirled around him. Amid the torrent, he heard two shrill screams, both of which lasting longer than any one breath should have allowed.

One instant later, Harry's sneakers touched upon a creaky wooden floor. He found himself intact again, standing in one of the Leaky Cauldron's smallish, comfortable upstairs rooms. McGonagall sat at the foot of the bed with her hands folded in her lap.

As the phoenix medallion clattered to the floor, Dresden and Molly staggered in their new surroundings. Dresden's wild look darted around the room. He produced his blasting rod, and leaned heavily on his staff as he yelped, "What the hell was that? Where are we?"

McGonagall rose from the bed. She traded the slightest of glances with Harry, who was hard-pressed not to smile in recollection of his first portkey trip. "Welcome to London, Professor Dresden, Miss Carpenter. I trust you aren't too shaken by your trip."

"That was…that was…" Dresden said.

"…like a galactic water slide!" Molly supplied dizzily, as she smiled and righted herself. "That was pretty cool."

Dresden scowled at McGonagall and Harry. "London? So we just rode some kind of…Nevernever zip-line? And you didn't warn us, why?"

Harry had several retorts waiting on the tip of his tongue—how he had never met a wizard outside of himself unfamiliar with the idea of a portkey, or how he had waited weeks just to see such bewilderment on the tall, absentee wizard's face—but Molly was quicker to answer. "Calm down, boss. We're all okay. Are we seriously in London? Like London, England?"

"Exactly like," McGonagall assured her. "We'll be visiting Diagon Alley for books and robes for you and Mister Potter. Will you be needing a wand?"

Molly brightened. Harry could practically see the memory of his simple levitation spell flashing behind her eyes. "Hell, yes!" she exclaimed. Then she reddened at McGonagall's raised eyebrow, and stammered, "I mean, yes, ma'am."

Turning to Dresden, McGonagall said, "And I assume you will require a wand as well, Professor Dresden? Wizard McCoy left me with the impression that you hadn't yet obtained one."

Dresden snorted. He rapped his staff on the floor. "I think I have everything I need right here, thanks. Besides, I make my own equipment."

McGonagall's mouth perked. "Well, be that as it may, you'll need a wand for teaching purposes, and you haven't the time to make your own. Hogwarts has a modest fund for such expenses as yours and Miss Carpenters." Turning to Harry, she said, "In the interests of discretion, I've taken the liberty of procuring a small amount for you as well, Mister Potter, for the purchase of your textbooks."

Harry's fleeting amusement was snuffed by rising bile. McGonagall would not even let him access his parents' account in Gringotts for fear of Death Eaters locating him. She was hiding him from everyone the same way Dumbledore had hidden him when he was a child, or when Draco had come to kill him. It was yet another reminder of how powerless McGonagall had made him, and how far he was from completing Dumbledore's mission to destroy the scattered pieces of Voldemort's soul.

To none of Harry's surprise, McGonagall instructed him to wear the invisibility cloak while walking out in the open. The goggled look Molly gave him when he slid the gossamer fabric over his shoulders almost made him forget his frustrations. He managed a brief chuckle as she poked his invisible stomach and then whistled appreciatively.

"Feeling jealous, Padawan?" Dresden asked Molly teasingly. "His blanket might do a better veil than you."

Molly, ever the good student, responded in kind. "The thread count's higher, maybe. But better?"

A prim cough from McGonagall spurred them out the door. By the time they reached the door of the Leaky Cauldron, Harry's dark mood had resumed. His cloak was in place, leaving him to shadow the others in miserable silence.

But just as quickly, that mood lifted at the sight of Molly and Dresden's shared expression. Their jaws dropped at the rows of crooked buildings packed tightly together. They dropped lower at the sight of a hundred witches and wizards packed between those buildings. Ten dozen swishing robes and pointed hats bustled around them, some of them looking askance at the two Americans being escorted by McGonagall. All of them, though, gave the old headmistress a wide berth.

Molly gawked at the sight of two goblins in tailored suits walking past them in the opposite direction. The goblins returned her stare with brief, sharp looks. It reminded Harry of himself seven years ago, when Hagrid had brought him to Diagon Alley for his first foray into the world of magic.

Delicately, McGonagall touched Molly's chin, closing the girl's mouth. "Please don't be rude," the professor said.

"Yeah, Molly," Dresden said, his mouth still very wide. "Don't be rude."

Harry ghosted behind them through the street. He stepped carefully, staying close to Molly to keep from being bumped. As funny as it would be to spook some unsuspecting wizard, Harry doubted it would improve his situation. The temptation remained, though, and grew more powerful the longer he stared at the back of McGonagall's head.

They stopped first at Potage's. The long look of incredulity Dresden gave to Molly's new, thick-bottomed pewter cauldron made Harry wonder what the tall wizard taught his apprentice in the secretive basement of his apartment, if not potion making. Molly, stranger still, didn't stop giggling at the black cauldron until well after they visited Slug and Jiggers Apothecary to pick up a set of scales and the materials both students would need for the year.

One stern look from McGonagall silenced Molly's giggles, smothered Dresden's look, and sent Harry grumbling back under his cloak until they reached Flourish and Blotts. Hogwarts' crest hung on a banner in the store's windows, reminding shoppers of the coming school year, and boasting the lowest prices of anyone.

_Looking To Learn?_ the banner asked in bold red letters. _Know Where To Go!_

The rows of magical tomes enraptured Molly and Dresden, who were herded by McGonagall toward another set of Hogwarts banners. As Harry shucked his cloak, he looked around the gaggle of wizards visiting the shop, hoping to spy a familiar face.

But McGonagall's timing had outsmarted his hopes. So close to the start of the first term, most of Hogwarts' students had collected their necessities. There were a handful of younger students standing close to their parents beneath the Hogwarts banners. This late in the day,

The bookstore had set aside the books Hogwarts required for the coming year. Molly breezed down the line of tables, her hands brushing the covers of the myriad titles. "Look at all this hoodoo knowhow," she said in a hush. "Boss, if we had a place like this back in Chicago, I would have made the White Council by now."

"Who says we don't?" Dresden said. His own astonished expression drained the joke of any real weight.

Harry glanced back at the towering wizard in the heavy black coat. In the time he'd spent with Dresden, Harry had been amused by the man's astonishment at the slightest piece of the magical world. It reminded Harry of his first days, walking at Hagrid's side as the enormous gamekeeper introduced him to a whole new world beyond the confines of the Dursleys' cupboard.

But in the presence of the great line of schoolbooks, it occurred to Harry that McGonagall had chosen Dresden to be their teacher. Dresden, a wizard who gawked at everyday magical creatures, who struggled to wrap his mind around an owl's parcel delivery, would be responsible for teaching the students of Hogwarts how to defend themselves from dark arts. Even without the looming specter of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, the notion sent a chill down Harry's spine.

As Molly brushed down the line, her hand passed the stack of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three, Harry saw her fingers drifting lazily toward a single volume with a binding like rough leather. Harry saw a line of pinched folds in the book's skin, and recognized them as closed eyes. He spotted the barest hint of fangs amidst the pressed pages. Without thinking, he grabbed Molly's hand and pulled it back.

Molly stiffened in his grasp. She started to protest, but her words became a yelp as the Monster Book of Monsters opened its eyes and snapped viciously at Molly. The family behind her scattered as the tall, normally graceful girl tumbled backward and slammed into a row of bookcases.

With a practiced motion, Harry stroked the spine of the book. Its snapping ceased at once. As the snarling cover closed its eyes and stilled, Harry lifted it gently by the corners and nestled it back between the other books.

McGonagall raised a sharp eyebrow at the horrified looks on Dresden's and Molly's faces. Without looking, the prim headmistress shooed away the family Molly had almost flattened. "Be mindful of what you touch," she said. Her words were aimed at Molly, but Harry easily spied the sidelong look McGonagall spared Dresden.

After that, Molly collected her books without much enthusiasm, piling them into her new cauldron. She kept well clear of the table with the sleeping book. Her teacher picked out one of the volumes from her cauldron and sniffed at its title.

"The Standard Book of Spells…NEWT Edition?" Dresden read the title aloud. He glanced down the row of books at Hagrid's ravenous, slumbering textbook. "NEWTs, books that eat you… Is everything here stupid?"

Harry bit back a scathing retort at the wizard who could barely wrap his head around a portkey trip. None of them wasted any more words in Flourish and Blotts. McGonagall paid for both sets of books. Then she fixed Harry with an expectant stare until he dropped under the hem of his cloak.

As they started for Ollivanders, a bright splash of color drew Harry's brooding eye down the block. The sign over the entrance to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes practically grinned at passersby. The lettering glowed with a combination of charms that made each letter shimmer and dance in place. A fresh red coat of paint covered the building, a stark contrast to the old, even decrepit neighbors on either side of the shop.

He stopped, letting McGonagall and the two American wizards trail ahead in the crowd. A handful of confused wizards jostled his invisible shoulder as he considered his two wizard jailers. The memory of McGonagall's trace potion tickled his innards.

In just a moment's hesitation, Harry decided that if McGonagall was going to track his every movement, she was welcome to do so. It wouldn't stop him from going where he wanted to go.

Harry threw back the cloak as he ducked into the shop on the heels of a pair of girls. They were a few years younger than Harry, and wearing enough perfume to make him sneeze before he even became visible again.

The girls made straight for a table decorated with red paper hearts that floated in the air. Small, pinkish glass bottles sat on the table's display. From the way they were scattered, it was easy to tell that the display had been almost emptied. And from the crowd of girls that gathered around the table to clutch at the bottles, it was easy to tell where the bottles had gone.

"Well, well," Harry heard a familiar voice say behind him. "If it isn't the Ghost of the Burrow himself."

Harry turned with a ready grin for the twin owners of the joke shop. Fred and George looked every bit the irascible troublemakers they had been since Harry's early days in Hogwarts. But they had painted themselves with a veneer of respectability, each dressed in fine, fitted business suits, with monogramed handkerchiefs folded in pocket and cufflinks shaped like Galleons.

Of course, being Fred and George, their respectability only went so far. Their tailored suits were dyed in garish shades of red and blue, the colors halving each suit down the middle, and each suit mirroring the other. And each of them wore a black bowler hat with a red band.

"Hello Fred, George," Harry said. He glanced back at the sound of a shriek. The two girls he had followed into the store were fighting over the last pink bottle on the display. "Bit out of season for love potions, isn't it?" he asked.

Fred rolled his eyes, but George beamed. "It's a new recipe," George bragged, hanging his thumbs in his armpits. "A little something of my own making. Even halfway out from Valentines, we can't keep it stocked."

"We could double production if this tit would let me see the recipe," Fred said in a stage whisper to Harry, more than loud enough for George to hear. "He won't even let me see him make it."

"There's enough trouble telling us apart as it is," George huffed, though his eyes were still crinkled and smiling. "Now everyone can tell: I'm the brilliant one, and he's Fred."

Fred's swift hand stole the bowler right off of George's head. Before Harry could balk, the gangly twin dropped the hat onto his head. Harry adjusted the odd accouterment and stared up at Fred in confusion.

"While my handsome Number Two here slaved over a hot cauldron, I was busy coming up with an expansion for our line of hats. The Shield Hat was a big hit with the Ministry, so I figured, why not capitalize on the notion?"

Harry felt at the hat. "It's…nice?" he said after a moment.

With a knowing grin, Fred touched his temple, and said, "Tap the band, and say, 'Little hat atop my hair, let me use another's stare.' "

Confused, Harry repeated the couplet. Then he jumped in surprise as he saw himself standing in the shop, a bowler hat perched on his head. He saw himself startle backwards and bump into a display rack of Extendable Ears even as he felt the rack bump against his elbow.

Harry tore the bowler hat from his head. His vision resolved again into the grinning twins. As his surprise faded, he turned the hat in his hands, and said, "What is it?"

Tapping his own hat, Fred said, "They're called Blinking Bowlers. They come in a matched set. When one party activates his hat with that clever little rhyme, he can see whatever the other bloke sees."

"They have limited range, and a skilled Occlumens that's paying attention can usually stifle the effect," George said. Then he shrugged, and admitted, "But they're a clever piece of magic all the same."

Cautiously, Harry replaced the bowler on his head and said the rhyme again. This time he was ready when his eyes switched to Fred's point of view. He raised his hand and waved, watching himself as though he were looking in a reversed mirror. "I suppose Aurors could use it to see what the other sees," Harry said.

Exchanging a look with his brother, Fred said, "Or it could make for the perfect accessory for a young lady friend who wants to look her best in the women's dormitories."

As Harry watched himself, he saw a puzzled look come over his features. He removed his hat and fixed the twins with another questioning look. "Wait. What was that you called me? A ghost?"

"Right you are, my specter," George said, taking back his hat so he could sweep it in a mocking bow. "Every time Fred and I venture home for a decent meal, the whole house is abuzz with your name."

"It's always 'Harry' this, and 'Harry' that," Fred agreed. "And you've left your lady love in quite the state as well. Nothing but moping and sighing all day long."

Harry's heartbeat quickened. He tried to keep the excitement from his face, and said too casually, "Ginny?"

Fred's face soured. "I was talking about Ron. The poor sod is a mess. It's all Hermione can do to keep food in his mouth and clean clothes on his back. Those two have been dickering back and forth like the world's loudest tennis match."

"With no balls to be found," George added ruefully.

It gave Harry some small measure of comfort to know that, even if he was cut off from them, Ron and Hermione hadn't given up on him. Clever Hermione might still be looking for ways to contact him, or researching anything and everything on Voldemort's horcruxes. And even if not, it was enough to know that they had each other.

Fred sobered, and pinned Harry in place with a serious look. "Mind you, Ginny isn't much better. You did quite the number on her."

"You made a right mess of everything, really," George said, echoing his brother's stern tone. "Between all the love struck children you've littered around the Burrow and missing Bill's wedding, your name is dangerous stuff around a Weasley."

"Worse around two," Fred said.

Harry grimaced. "Listen," he said, raising his hands as if to ward off the annoyed twins, "my summer hasn't exactly been going the way I'd like. I'd like nothing better than to set things right with Ginny and Ron. I've just been…busy."

He couldn't think of any version of the truth that Fred and George might believe. A secret wizarding community was harboring him for the summer, until one of its American wizards came back with him to Hogwarts to play the part of his guard dog? If Harry couldn't feel the month-long crick in his neck from sleeping on a couch, he might be inclined to dismiss his own memories as bunk.

His gaze wandered out the shop window as he searched for some kind of explanation. Then he stopped. His stomach froze, churning like he had swallowed a winter tempest. He followed a flash of blond hair that bobbed through the crowded street outside. The head he watched turned once, looking back the way it had come, and Harry saw the frightened, unmistakable face of Draco Malfoy.

Without a word to Fred and George, he darted for the entrance, drawing his folded invisibility cloak from his shoulder. As he grasped the hem, read to throw the gossamer cloth over his head, the shop door opened, and he stopped in his tracks.

McGonagall filled the doorway despite her slender frame. Her face was a cold mask. "Mister Potter," she said archly.

Harry's icy stomach sank. It took an extreme effort to lower the half-poised cloak from his shoulders. "Professor," he answered in a dull voice.

Tall, excited Molly peered over McGonagall's shoulder, grinning like mad. "Harry! So this is where you went."

Without a word, McGonagall stepped into the shop, allowing Molly through to skitter in and stare in awe at the Weasleys' wheezes. A moment later, Dresden followed, all sweeping coat and sullen glare.

Harry gritted his teeth and stood on his tiptoes, trying to find that slick blond scrub in the crush of wizards milling past the shop. But there was no sign of Malfoy anywhere in the crowd and, seconds later, McGonagall stepped in front of his view of the windows to ensure that her glare was all Harry could see. He glared back to assure her that her message was received.

Molly swung a trick wand to and fro, oblivious of the petty battle of silences going on behind her. True to advertising, the wand became a rubber chicken in her hand. Her peals of delighted laughter drew every eye in earshot.

"This is so cool!" Molly said. She waved the wand again, and it became a stick of celery. When she jiggled it at Dresden, it turned into a limp noodle. "Check it out, boss! I'm a wizard!"

With an impossibly straight expression, Dresden examined the dangling construct, and said, "Yep. Some metaphors speak for themselves, Padawan."

Fred and George moved almost simultaneously, smoothing their jacket fronts and tilting their respective bowlers at opposite, equally rakish angles. They stepped forward, each offering Molly their hand.

"Well, hello there, and welcome to our shop," Fred said. "Any friend of Harry Potter's is, we hope, a friend of ours."

"We would be the proprietors of this fine establishment," George said. "We would also be delighted to make the acquaintance of such a lovely creature."

Molly awkwardly offered her hands to the twins. Then she grinned as they each shook one. Then she blushed furiously as, in perfect unison, they bent to brush her respective knuckles with a light kiss.

"Accents and manners," she said, drawing her hands from their grinning lips. "I think they're pulling ahead of you, Goggles. You'd better watch yourself."

"Goggles?" George echoed, looking delighted. Harry grumbled silently at the smirk crossing both twins' faces. He expected the nickname would soon become an international sensation thanks to the troublesome Weasley entrepreneurs.

The noodle became a wand again as Molly placed it back in its bin. "Sure. Harry and I have been getting ready for school together. I'm a…"

She cast an uncertain glance back at Dresden. The grizzled wizard's nod was perceptible only to the most studious of observers.

"—transfer student," Molly continued. "Harry's been pretty busy getting me up to speed on all the magic stuff happening on this side of the pond. He's been a pretty good teacher for being such a little pipsqueak."

The effect on the twins was immediate. Their smiles faded, replaced by stony expressions that swiveled toward Harry. Their eyes filled Harry with a terrible chill.

"Been spending a lot of time together, eh?" George said slowly.

"Harry mentioned something about being 'busy,' as I recall," Fred said.

At the twins' meaningful tone, Harry looked at Molly. He really, truly looked at her. And he swallowed.

Dresden's long black coat and dark eyes made him an oddity in Diagon Alley. But oddities fit into the wizarding world like a new exhibit in a museum: new and noticeable at first, but still looking like it belonged. Molly wore Muggle clothes, which made her a blazing fire in that same museum.

It only took a second look for Harry to realize something he had only been vaguely aware of for the weeks he had known Molly, something that had flitted at the edges of his mind every time he looked at her: Molly was pretty.

Molly was very pretty.

Molly was tripping-over-your-tongue, making-an-idiot-of-yourself, hoping-and-praying-that-she-won't-laugh-in-your-face-when-you-tell-her-so pretty.

She had long, shapely legs that climbed quite high into her cutoff denim shorts. She had scandalous curves wrapped in a tight, thin cotton T-shirt. Her glittering eyes hid behind hid behind a sweep of pink and white dyed hair.

The brothers of Harry's Maybe-Yes-Maybe-No girlfriend were visibly displeased that he was spending the rest of his summer with this extremely desirable young lady. And Harry couldn't really blame them.

Before the twins' glares could freeze Harry solid, McGonagall rested a hand on his shoulder and pulled him gently toward the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to 'acquaint' yourselves on your own time," the old professor told the Weasleys. "We have quite a lot to do yet. Miss Carpenter, Mister Dresden…Mister Potter," she said, stressing Harry's name.

"Of course, Professor. We won't take up any more of Harry's important time," Fred said.

"And we'll give Ginny your regards," George added, favoring Harry with one last sneering look.

Harry disappeared under his cloak and followed McGonagall out the door without complaint. Dresden was likewise silent. Even still, Harry noticed that the tall wizard trailed a comfortable distance behind McGonagall, creating an unspoken envelope in which Harry was meant to stay.

The sense of unease Harry had felt in walking the streets returned. He strained his senses through the veil of the cloak, trying to push aside his misery at being caught. But it was only when his thoughts flitted to his own misery that he understood the sense of unease around him.

He could hear his own soft footsteps.

Diagon Alley bustled around him, as crowded as any other time Harry had visited it. But there were no conversations. Vendors didn't hawk and call from their stalls like they normally did. Instead, they stood shiftily, only meeting the eyes of the occasional customer, and conducting business in terse murmurs. Wizards and witches moved the streets with their eyes down and faces set forward. They all walked briskly. No one lingered or loitered.

Harry marveled at the quiet tension that drew Diagon Alley as tight as a bowstring. It had taken the laughter and life of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and its subsequent absence, to awaken Harry to the state of things.

Though the Ministry would doubtlessly insist otherwise, he could feel the Death Eaters' hand clutched tightly around the Alley. And if the mere thought of Voldemort risen could snuff the life from Diagon Alley, Harry shivered to think what the dark wizard had actually wrought in the months since Dumbledore's fall.

Feeling even more helpless than he did in Chicago, Harry trudged to Ollivanders, invisible and silent. He said nothing for the remainder of the trip, ignoring McGonagall's brittle farewell and Molly's barely masked concern.

McGonagall and Dresden exchanged a few conspiratorial whispers. Then Harry, Dresden, and Molly returned through the portkey with two stacks of books, two parcels of potion ingredients, a new pewter cauldron, and two new wands—one of ash and unicorn's hair, and the other of blackthorn and dragon heartstring.


	9. The Beetle in the Forest

_**Chapter Nine**_

_**The Beetle in the Forest**_

* * *

"No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Dresden howled, and threw the envelope at his car.

Harry watched his guardian and soon-to-be teacher pace back and forth in front of the patchwork Volkswagen. Dresden had been doing this for over a minute now, ever since he had opened the hood of the car to stow their luggage.

Harry's trunk sat at the curb next to a bulging black duffel bag. Dresden nearly tripped over them as he fumed back and forth along the length of the car. Then Dresden tore open the driver's side door and stared inside. That great black coat prevented Harry from seeing anything before Dresden slammed the door shut again and continued to fume.

Whatever it was that had raised Dresden's ire, Harry vowed that he wouldn't let it ruin this day. It was the day he had been waiting for all month. The day he would return to Hogwarts.

Something thumped against his leg. He looked down, exchanging glances with Mouse. The bull elephant of a dog sat by Harry's feet, watching his master as Harry did. Harry absently scratched Mouse behind the ears, glad that he wasn't the only one excited about the trip.

Stooping, Dresden read the letter again, his eyes dancing across the page more quickly this time. They had found the letter pinned beneath the car's windshield wiper upon venturing out into the late morning. Whatever it had said, and whatever was inside the car, was clearly upsetting Dresden.

"What does that even mean?" Dresden said, and snapped the paper. " 'The car has been shown the way.' What does that even mean? I thought we were driving to a rendezvous point to use one of those portkey things. Now my car is…is what? What the hell is this?"

The rumble of a pickup truck distracted Harry from asking further. The battered white truck pulled up to the curb a dozen feet behind the Volkswagen's bumper. Molly jumped out the passenger side before the engine stopped running. Her father left the driver's side a moment later, circling the truck to retrieve an enormous floral print suitcase from behind the tailgate.

"Hey, Goggles! Boss!" Molly said, bounding up to them. She wore a pleated skirt, the hem of which came nowhere close to her knees, and an oversized white button-up shirt with a red tie swinging from a loose, clumsy knot. The small backpack she wore pulled the shirt tight to her chest, leaving little for Harry's imagination to do. She's drawn her hair into stubby pigtails, the dye split down the middle so that one tail was pink and the other was white.

Dresden looked up from the letter, and then did a double-take. Harry would have smirked if his jaw hadn't dropped to the ground. "Never mind the car. What in the hell are you wearing, Grasshopper? You look like the cover of…" When he saw her father, he coughed, and finished the thought, "…the kind of magazine I would never own and have never seen."

A tired, tight smile split Michael's beard as the large man wheeled the cheery luggage up to the Volkswagen. "Her fashion sense made breakfast this morning particularly loud. Hello, Harry. Hello, Harry," he said.

Molly scoffed. "Mom was going to be unhappy about this no matter what I did. At least this way she could be mad instead of sad. And you know how much she likes being mad."

"The Lord gives us many way of dealing with our sadness, Molly," Michael said in a way that made Harry think he was repeating his half of an old, old argument. "Your mother loses her temper. Certain others choose to act out."

"What? I'm going to private school. I have to get all my disobedience out now so I can be a good student," said Molly. She struck a pose and pouted at Dresden. "You don't want me to be a 'bad girl,' do you, Harry?"

Dresden stared at her for a moment, and then looked to Michael. The letter in his grasp coiled into a tube. "May I?" he asked Michael.

"Be my guest," Michael said.

The rolled letter _thunked_ Molly in the head. She giggled, not bothering to look chasten, as Harry said, "Straighten up and fly right, padawan. You're an ambassador for America now, and you know what that means."

"Don't worry," she said, sobering. "I only packed three guns."

"Good girl." Dresden's smile faded as he turned back to Harry. "Blink, Goggles, or they'll dry out."

Harry realized he had been staring, and shook his gaze free from Molly's hemline. Since his uncomfortable revelation in Diagon Alley, Harry had found himself noticing certain aspects of Molly more and more, much to his chagrin. Molly hadn't said anything, but he had suspected that she noticed the new attention. The sly glance she slipped him only confirmed his suspicions.

"Sorted out the problem with the car, then?" Harry said, loudly changing the subject.

The good humor on Dresden's face soured immediately. He kicked the tire of the Volkswagen in frustration before returning to the mysterious note.

Michael set the bag aside. "Car trouble?" he asked.

"If you want to call it a car, then sure," Dresden groused. "I don't know what McGonagall is playing at, but you do not mess with a man's car. Molly, wait!"

Molly had circled the Volkswagen during the conversation. The warning came too late as she opened the door and peered inside the car. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. "Boss, how the hell did you do this?"

Harry, exhausted with the mystery, circled around to her side to see. The bucket seats and dashboard he could see through the glass were nowhere to be found through the open door. Instead, there was a murky space inside veiled in gauzy red sheets. Some sort of incense tickled Harry's nose. He could see soft golden light flickering behind the veil.

"It was McGonagall," Dresden said flatly. Affecting the headmistress's pitch, he added, "For our transport needs," obviously quoting her letter.

Then Harry understood. It was like the Ministry car Mr. Weasley had borrowed to ferry his family around. But judging from the dim view he could see through the veil, Harry guessed that McGonagall had found them a much bigger car. Much, much bigger.

"It's certainly different," Michael said charitably. "Roomier, I suppose."

"It's my car," Dresden growled. "You don't mess with another man's car, Michael. Period. It's a rule."

"You're joking, right? This is amazing! She made the Beetle into a CARDIS!" Molly said, her head poked through the veil. She pulled back to give Harry a questioning look. "Or TARDIC, I guess? Time and relative dimension in car?"

Harry gave her a puzzled look. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he admitted.

She made a disgusted noise. "I thought you said you were British."

A sharp whistle and a gesture from Dresden drew Harry back to their bags. They stowed their luggage and Molly's colorful suitcase under the hood, which had been expanded to the size of a large closet. Harry had to catch himself from laughing at the teeth-grinding expression on Dresden's face.

By the time the last of their things had been loaded, Molly had drifted back to Michael's side. The mirth in her features had fallen away, leaving her expression pained and blank. Michael wrapped her in his powerful arms, nearly lifting her off her feet as they hugged.

"You'll write," Michael said. "And you'll call, if you can."

Molly answered with a small, choked, "Mm-hmm."

"And you'll apologize to your mother," he added, and pulled her away to look at her.

She laughed, wiping at her eyes. "I will when she does."

Michael smiled. "I suppose I should be thankful you turned out so much like her," he said. "Listen to Harry. Be safe. I love you."

Molly's eyes glistened again. "I love you too," she said, and hugged him fiercely.

Harry squirmed, trying to pretend he couldn't see Molly's tearful farewell. He had seen a few similar moments with the Weasleys as well, and always felt like he was intruding on them.

His heart broke to see Molly like this, but it seethed a little too. Nothing in his life really compared to the bond she shared with her father. Certainly the Dursleys had never held Harry as Michael held his daughter. And as much as he loved the Weasleys, he knew it wasn't the same. Guiltily, Harry knew that a not-so-small part of him was jealous.

He couldn't help but notice that Dresden squirmed in almost the exact same way.

The two Carpenters parted a moment later. Michael shook Dresden's hand, and the two men exchanged a nod. Then, to Harry's surprise, Michael shook his hand too, and gave him the same nod. As he got into his truck, Michael called out, "Watch out for her, Harry."

Harry exchanged a look with Dresden as the white truck rumbled away from the curb. Neither of them needed to ask which one of them Michael meant. It didn't matter.

Molly wiped her eyes again. Her grin returned as she grasped the car door. "Okay. Sappiness complete. Now let's make some magic!"

One at a time, they pushed through the veil covering the Volkswagen's door. Mouse followed, panting happily as he trotted ahead of them. Once they were in, they stood and stared in awe.

The interior of the car was much larger than Harry had guessed. It was the size of a small ballroom, but with a low ceiling that lent the space an intimate feeling. More veils strung to the ceiling forced Molly and Dresden to stoop. The floor was carpeted in a plush, velveteen fabric that gave beneath their feet. Huge cushions were strewn haphazardly around the room in lieu of furniture. The whole room was lit by a handful of sconces, their gas flames flickering, making the shadows in the room undulate.

Mouse took to the room at once. The giant dog hopped onto a cushion positioned next to an old, dormant hookah. He turned around three times, then plopped down. His tail thumped against either side of the cushion.

"What. The. Hell." Dresden rubbed his face and looked to McGonagall's letter again, angling it to read in the dim light.

"It's like something from Arabian Nights," Harry said.

"It's like a porno set from Arabian Nights!" Molly insisted. She grinned at Dresden, and said, "If my mom could see us now, she would murder you."

"This wasn't my—" Dresden started to snap, but then gave up. "Forget it. The letter says to check the curtains at the front…"

After a minute's search, they found a thicker set of curtains tacked to the wall that hid a smaller compartment. This space had a pair of plush leather chairs sitting before a glass window that looked suspiciously like the Volkswagen's windshield. He could see the miscolored hood of the car reaching out Harry crouched down and saw the suburban street outside.

Set before the chairs was a dashboard with a single gauge and a single button. The gauge had two large rubies and a track set between them. A small, sapphire scarab sat on the track, resting against one of the rubies.

Checking the letter one last time, Dresden nodded, and plopped down into the seat. "Well, at least it's idiot-proof."

He pressed the button. The floor underneath them lurched violently, throwing Harry into Molly, and Molly into the cabin wall. Dresden only kept his seat by clutching the rich leather of the armrests.

The car's hood flickered and vanished before them. Then world outside the glass fell away. As they were tossed about, Harry watched the neighborhood whirl beneath them, growing smaller by the second as they ascended. In moments, the boardinghouse had become a dot among dots. Chicago's skyscrapers were matchbooks on the landscape, and then they too became seamless with the world below. As the floor steadied and righted itself, a bank of clouds began rolling past the windshield, blotting out their view.

Harry could feel the gentle tug of their car accelerating. He had to admit that McGonagall had pulled out all the stops in keeping him a prisoner. He had been in Ministry cars and in an invisible flying car, but never both at the same time. The spellcraft to maintain all of this inside Dresden's tiny vehicle couldn't have been easy or cheap.

Gradually, the color returned to Dresden's knuckles, and he released the armrests. He stared blankly at the rolling clouds and said, "Okay. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't that."

"Are we flying?" Molly gasped. She leaned forward to get a better view. As her hands pressed against the dash, Harry saw the blue scarab jitter slightly. It moved a fraction of an inch toward the ruby on the opposite side of the track. He guessed it was meant to tell them how close they were to their destination.

Dresden pulled on the untucked tail of Molly's white shirt, easing her back from the windshield. Some of the color had returned to his face, but not all of it. "Why don't you two grab a seat in the back? Just in case this…'thing' decides to start another airshow."

Molly snorted. She gestured to the single button and said, "So you're going to man the controls?"

"Just go," Dresden said, rolling his eyes. As he saw the velvety curtain ripple aside, he added, "And no hanky-panky on the set. Capisce?"

She gave him a dazzling grin. "Right. Hanky or panky. We don't have the budget for both."

Dresden jabbed two fingers towards his eyes, and then jabbed the fingers at Molly. It only made her grin wider. When that grin glanced off of Harry, he swallowed hard. He didn't dare look back at Dresden as he followed Molly through the curtain.

They dragged a pair of cushions over to where the car door sat oddly in the wall. The clouds had thinned enough for them to see green and brown patches of landscape rolling slowly beneath the car. Molly seemed enthralled with the sight. Harry couldn't blame her. He had ached for a chance to fly all summer, but between being stuck at the Dursleys' and being broomless in Chicago, he never had a chance.

Slowly, inexorably, Harry's gaze wandered back to the pair of legs draped across the cushion next to him. He cursed his eyes, and he cursed Fred and George harder for waking him to this new distraction.

It wasn't that he didn't like Molly. It wasn't that he "liked" her, either. She was nice, and kind, and someone he could talk to about magic, which had never happened to him before out in the Muggle world. She had been a good friend during his American exile.

She was funny. She knew things about magic that Harry didn't, and she listened with awed fascination about the things he knew that she didn't. Her laugh never failed to make Harry smile. And her smile could send his heart pounding if she tilted it the right way.

But then he would think of Ginny, and he would ache with confusion and guilt. He knew that the same dangers keeping him from Ginny would keep him from Molly, even if he wanted something with Molly, which he wasn't sure if he did or didn't, even while he remembered the last, lingering, electrifying kiss Ginny had given him before the summer. Before he ended it.

It was all complicated, and Harry seriously doubted that his life was in need of yet another complication.

When Molly noticed him staring, she blushed. He tried to pretend like he had been looking at something else, but she clearly wasn't buying it. She tugged self-consciously on the hem of her skirt, and said, "Pretty goofy, right?"

Harry very carefully said nothing.

She pulled the binders out of her hair, letting it swing freely over her ears. Folding her legs under the short pleats of her skirt, she said, "I really did just wear this to cheese off my mom. I just…I knew there was either going to be crying or yelling when I said goodbye. And I knew I couldn't handle her crying. You know?"

He didn't, but he nodded anyway. "My aunt and uncle were always yelling at me. I don't know what I would have done if I saw them crying over my leaving. It would probably mean they were being hexed, or mind-controlled, or something," he said, and smiled.

Molly's face grew stony at that, chasing the grin off Harry's face. He wasn't sure what he had said, but it was only after several minutes of uncomfortable silence that Molly began to speak again.

"So, is Hogwarts anything like this?" Molly asked, gesturing around them.

Harry didn't really know how to answer her, so he offered a noncommittal shrug.

She swung her gaze around the gauzy room and then looked back to him. "You're gonna be around, right? You're not gonna ditch the Yank once we get in front of the cool kids?" She smiled around the words, but there was a note of genuine worry behind them.

He just grinned. "I think the 'cool kids' will like you loads better than me. You're the one who's going to be popular and forget me, not the other way around."

Her smile became genuine. "We'll just have to hang out in secret, then. So nobody's reputation gets ruined," she said.

"Deal."

They settled into an amicable silence after that, content to watch the ground drifting below them. When the ground became featureless ocean, they shifted deeper into the room. Molly picked a cushion beneath one of the sconces and pulled out her schoolbooks. Her lips moved wordlessly from time to time. Her finger flicked absently, miming the motion of a wand.

Harry, unable to fathom the idea of studying before school began, contented himself with exploring the rest of the chamber. He couldn't imagine why McGonagall had made the Volkswagen into a traveling palace. After searching for over an hour, he still hadn't found any clue behind her motives. So he contented himself with plopping down next to Mouse and watching the dog's tail flop back and forth as Harry scratched his ears.

After perhaps another hour, Dresden called through the curtain, "I think we're getting close. You mind coming up here for a minute, hometown boy?"

When Harry glanced at Molly, she just shrugged. "Go see what he wants," she suggested. Tugging on her loose tie, she added, "I'm gonna go change. This was fun and all, but it's maybe not the impression I want to make."

"I found a bathroom in the back," said Harry.

Brightening, Molly took her backpack toward the rear of the chamber, leaving Harry to push into the small compartment at the front. "Is everything all right?" he asked.

Dresden shrugged, gesturing to the sparse dashboard. "As far as I know. Grab a seat."

As Harry sank into the other leather chair, he saw lush green hills rolling beneath them through the windshield. It was late afternoon already, which surprised Harry until he remembered which direction they were going. A twinge of familiarity tweaked his stomach as he spied a small, gothic shape on the horizon.

Dresden said nothing for a long moment. The silence quickly became uncomfortable. Harry tried to sit still, tried to keep looking forward out the windshield, but his eyes betrayed him. Every time he glanced over at Dresden, the older wizard was rubbing his mouth and frowning, as if wrestling with a troublesome thought.

Finally, Dresden said, "You don't know me, and I don't know you."

It was, Harry thought, a fairly obvious thing to say. And if Dresden felt bad about it now, Harry wondered why the man hadn't made any kind of effort to rectify the matter when they'd lived together for more than a month. Not that Harry minded. Something about Dresden, about the other wizard's world and magic, didn't sit right with Harry.

As if reading Harry's thoughts, Dresden explained, "As it turns out, I've gathered a tidy little list of responsibilities over the years. It took a lot of time and pretty much all of my meager savings to make sure that the job I do, and the people I care about, will be okay while I'm gone. And between that and trying to make sense of all these textbooks McGonagall is expecting me to teach, I've been a little strapped for time.

"But now," he continued, turning to face Harry, "My responsibilities amount to you and Molly and the rest of the young, corruptible minds at Mage Academy. I'm supposed to teach you things, I guess. But more importantly, I'm supposed to keep you safe."

Harry bristled silently at that. Every memory of Harry standing alone against some nightmare or another—standing against the Basilisk, or dueling Voldemort in the cemetery, or cradling an addled Dumbledore on the lake of the Inferi—flashed into his mind. He didn't need to be protected anymore. Too many wizards had died for him already. Harry wasn't about to let this American cowboy, with his duster and his big stick, be added to that list.

Dresden sobered. "That look on your face?" he said. "I know that look. Maybe I don't know you that well, but I think I know what kind of person you are. And I know what you're going to try."

"You don't know anything," Harry growled.

"Listen, kid…"

"Harry," he snapped insistently.

Dresden smiled wanly. "Goggles," he compromised, "listen to me. McGonagall didn't tell me everything…nobody ever does, really…but she told me you're looking to take a poke at this Voldemort guy.

"So let me give you a piece of advice: don't."

Harry's brows knitted into a single angry line.

"At least not yet," amended Dresden. "Look, I'm the new kid in town here, so I've got a lot of catching up to do. But I want to help you, and I know a thing or two about knocking down warlocks that get a little too big for their britches. It kind of became my job a few years back. Funny story, actually. I got to ride a dinosaur."

One of Harry's eyebrows climbed in question.

Dresden waved the thought away. "Never mind. The important thing is, I'm supposed to watch out for you. But that doesn't make me your babysitter. Maybe…maybe you can think of me as a partner instead."

For a long, quiet moment, Harry searched Dresden's face, and found only earnestness and stubble. Still, that didn't change how Harry felt. He wouldn't bring this stranger into his personal war with Voldemort if he could help it.

On the other hand, McGonagall had made it clear that she wouldn't let Harry take a single step unless it was on her terms. And Dresden was to be McGonagall's first line of defense against Harry's completing Dumbledore's mission. If Harry meant to leave Hogwarts and find the Horcruxes, he would have to get past Dresden to do it. Such a thing would be easier if Dresden already trusted him, even just a little.

Harry stuck out his hand. He thought about smiling, and then decided it would be too much. "Partners, then," he said in a grudging tone.

Dresden shook it, likewise stone-faced. "Partners," he echoed.

"Are you two decent? I'm coming in anyway!" Molly yelled through the curtain. She pushed through and leaned against the backs of the two chairs. "That crazy bathroom is the size of my house. And it has a chandelier!"

She wore a proper shirt and skirt now, and a gray vest with a tie to match. Her hair was still split with two wild colors, but she had brushed it back behind a hairband. While not quite as striking as her other outfit, Harry thought she still looked lovely. Then he kicked himself for the thought.

"The Are-We-There-Yet-ometer says we're getting close," Dresden said. "Unless we accidentally found some other castle, I'd say that's it."

Together they watched Hogwarts grow in the windshield from a shape on the horizon to its full and ancient splendor. The old gray stone rose in high walls and higher towers, with slivers of green ivy creeping up the base. Waning sunlight turned the goals of the Quidditch pitch into rings of fire and splayed warm colors across the empty stands. Even this early, the lights of a dozen boats gathered on the lakeshore opposite the castle's gates, where Harry knew the first years were gathering to make their grand entrance into the school.

Harry swallowed hard, blinking back unexpected tears. After all his plans to escape his last year of Hogwarts, he hadn't realized just how much he had missed the school.

The car didn't land in the courtyard, which Harry thought was wise of their vehicle. Instead, it bypassed the proper grounds and flew low over the Forbidden Forest. Harry wondered if the car's invisible tires would catch on the tops of the trees that seemed to whiz right beneath their feet.

In another moment, the car circled wide over a small clearing in the forest, and then lowered itself gently to the ground. They touched down with a gentle lurch that was far more graceful than their takeoff had been.

Harry found himself first at the door, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other as Dresden and Molly collected themselves. Once Dresden had Mouse clipped to a lead, Harry decided he had been patient enough, and flung the door open.

Brown pine needles crunched underfoot as Harry pushed out into the cool forest. After being trapped with the scent of sandalwood, the smells of the forest were a welcome reprieve. He was about to comment on the improvement when he caught sight of someone standing at the edge of the clearing. His heart leapt into his throat as he ran forward and was caught in Hagrid's massive arms.

"Hagrid!" Harry cried, hugging as much of the enormous gamekeeper as he could.

"Hullo, Harry!" Hagrid beamed. He lifted Harry up as easily as Harry might have hefted a sack of flour. "Yer lookin' all right fer a new arrival to these fair shores."

"But what are you doing here?" Harry asked, suddenly confused. "Shouldn't you be with the first years?"

"Professor Flitwick agreed ter take tha' job fer me. Professor McGonagall asked me 'specially t' be here," Hagrid said, puffing somewhat at being tasked by the headmistress.

As Hagrid lowered Harry back to the forest floor, Harry heard a shrill "Whoa!" echo behind him. He turned back and saw Molly next to her dropped suitcase. She was staring with enormous eyes at the two of them. Behind her, Dresden stood at the open hood, his staff in hand but not aimed anywhere in particular.

It occurred to Harry just what kind of first impression Hagrid made on people. Certainly Harry's first time seeing the giant of a man bursting into the Dursley's rented cottage had left an indelible mark on Harry's memory. He smiled and motioned for Hagrid to follow him.

"Hagrid, I'd like you to meet Molly Carpenter," Harry said.

Lumbering to a halt, Hagrid offered his platter-sized hand to Molly, who took it limply on reflex. He shook her hand roughly, jostling her as a wide grin pierced his ratty beard. "Charmed, I'm sure. Any friend of Harry's, an' all that."

"Nice to meet…big," Molly said, tilting back so far that she nearly toppled backwards.

As Dresden hauled the rest of their luggage out of the car, Harry quickly added, "And our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Dresden."

Hagrid drew himself up in an attempt to appear more formal, which made Harry grin that much harder. "Nice ter meet yeh, Professor Dresden," he said. "I trust Professor McGonagall's letter told yeh I would be meetin' you lot?"

"Yeah, it mentioned that," Dresden said, and dropped his loads to shake Hagrid's hand. "She failed to mention that you were a small mountain."

"Beggin' yer pardon, Professor, but yeh don' strike me as any kind o' dwarf yerself," Hagrid said.

A vicious grin spread across Dresden's face. "Oh, I like you," he said. "And just call me Harry."

"Oh, I'm not one ter get so familiar with a professor until we've shared a bottle, or if he's saved my life," Hagrid said.

"Let's shoot for the former rather than the latter," said Dresden.

Without a word, Hagrid stooped and collected all of their baggage, even taking the duffel bag from Dresden's shoulder. For a moment Harry thought Dresden might object, but his mouth closed when Hagrid slung the entire burden under one arm, keeping the duffel's handles clutched in that hand.

There was a soft _chff_ that caught Harry's notice. He looked and saw Mouse sitting at Hagrid's feet, offering a single paw to the gamekeeper. It was the loudest voluntary noise Harry had ever heard the dog make.

"Well, there's a fine pooch!" Hagrid said, and took Mouse's paw. Then he scratched Mouse under the chin and laughed. "Wha' a polite fellow! And right smart, too!"

"I'm thinking we'd all be better off if he were teaching instead of me," said Dresden. "And speaking of molding young minds…Goggles, get under your cloak. Molly, you make yourself scarce too."

"What?" Harry exclaimed. He was finally at Hogwarts, where McGonagall wanted him, and now he was supposed to keep hiding? "You've got to be joking!"

"No arguments," said Dresden. "Keep quiet and out of sight until we're inside."

Harry drew the folded invisibility cloak he had been keeping in his jacket, a habit he had cultivated at McGonagall's insistence. As he unfurled the gossamer fabric, he began to ask Molly to move close so he could cloak them both.

He looked at her just in time to see her vanish. She rippled once, as if he were seeing a reflection of her in a pond, and then she simply wasn't there. There had been no wand or incantation involved. Harry couldn't imagine how she had managed it at all, let alone so quickly. He made a point to ask Molly about it later.

One he and Molly were suitably unseen, Hagrid began to lead them through the Forbidden Forest. Dresden followed, keeping Mouse on a long lead so the dog could stretch his legs after the long flight. Every so often, Mouse would freeze and look out into the forest, his ears perked and his nose testing the air. But he never lagged long enough for Dresden to need to tug on the lead.

Hagrid rambled amicably for a bit, explaining his various duties around the school and bragging about the creatures he had collected for his Care of Magical Creatures classes. When he began to ask Dresden similar questions, the wizard wove his answers out of vagaries and half-truths. He admitted to being American, but didn't say what city. He had studied magic since he was a child, but never said with whom, or where, or what kinds of magic.

Harry guessed McGonagall had cautioned their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep his past tightly secret. He still didn't fully understand the break between the Ministry and the mysterious Council Dresden worked for, but Harry inferred that the old headmistress had broken more rules in bringing Dresden here than Harry had broken in his entire life.

Suddenly Hagrid stopped. He raised his arm to stop Dresden, almost knocking down the wizard by accident. "Jest a minnit, Professor."

"What? Is something….oh." Dresden dropped Mouse's lead in shock as he spotted the impediment.

A unicorn stood on the path ahead. The beginnings of dusk painted its coat in brilliant shades of red and orange. Its long horn swung in their direction as it noticed the people watching it. Its dark eyes stared back, its muzzle twitching as it snorted.

"Oh…my…God!" the empty air squealed in Molly's voice.

The noise startled the unicorn. It bounded into the woods, vanishing into the brush with hardly a sound.

"I can't believe it," Molly said, still invisible. "That was, like, the birthday wish from when I was nine finally being granted. That was amazing! Harry, have you ever seen…?"

Dresden was looking around, frowning. "No. But I'm not really surprised."

"I am. Haven' seen one o' them in months now," Hagrid said. "They're rare enough already, but someth'n has 'em properly spooked. Can' even find their hair anywhere near the castle these days."

Shaking his head, Dresden said, "That's not what I meant. Molly, look at this place. Really look."

Through the veil of his cloak, Harry watched the tall wizard turn in place, surveying the forest. He imagined Molly doing the same, and looked for himself. Nothing seemed readily apparent in the growing shadows between the trees.

"You're right," Molly said at last. "This place feels like…"

"The Nevernever," Dresden finished. "The membrane separating the two worlds are paper-thin here. It's more like sieve than a wall. It probably filters out the bigger, nastier stuff, but the little ones…"

Hagrid looked confused. "Beggin' yer pardon, Professor, but wha's a 'Never-never?' "

Dresden's smiled and spoke with the ease of a very practiced liar. "Never-never mind, Hagrid. Just a crazy theory I read about somewhere."

They continued down the path. As the woods began to thin, Hagrid's chatting did likewise, until they walked in silence into the clearing around Hogwarts. Hagrid's old hut sat not far off, its chimney belching long sighs of smoke. The grounds were quiet and empty now, but Harry knew they would be filled with students by the next morning.

"Hold!"

A pair of men wearing heavy cloaks swept toward them from further down the forest's edge. The cloaks' wands were raised in challenge. Harry balked, wondering if he should run, when Hagrid stepped forward and raised his hand in greeting.

"A'right, Frakes, it's jest me," said Hagrid. "Mission accomplished."

The two men drew back their hoods and opened their cloaks. Harry recognized them as Aurors at once. The first man, Frakes, had hard eyes aimed at the gamekeeper, as the second man put away his wand and pulled out a long brass rod inscribed with pictorial gibberish.

"You neglected to announce yourself," Frakes snapped at Hagrid. "You're lucky we were expecting you, or you might not be standing now."

Harry remembered other wizards, bigger wizards than Frakes, trying to take Hagrid down, and he sincerely doubted it would be as easy as the Auror suggested. Then Harry jolted as he noticed Frakes' partner staring right at him.

The other Auror wore a set of clear goggles strapped over his eyes. His brows mashed over them as he pointed the brass rod at Harry, and said, "Off with the cloak, then. Everybody gets processed. No exceptions."

"Easy, Burton," Hagrid said, still jovial. "Jest like I said before, innit? Yeh can lose the cloak now, Harry."

Harry pulled the cloak off his body. He couldn't help but stare at Burton's goggles. Nothing had ever pierced his cloak so easily. Who were these Aurors, and what were they doing at Hogwarts?

Burton started for Harry with the rod, but then jumped back as Molly rematerialized beside him. His wand was out at once, causing Molly to yelp and raise her hands.

"Hey!" Dresden snapped. The tall wizard had his staff gripped hard. While he didn't quite aim it at the Aurors, its tip wasn't far off from them. "Cool it, Five-Oh. She's with us."

"I told yeh there'd be two of 'em," Hagrid rumbled, his patience evidently spent with the two men.

The Aurors lowered their wands, but the hard look on Burton's face remained. He tapped his goggles as if he were righting a television on the fritz, and demanded, "Where did she come from? Why couldn't I see her?"

"I…" Molly stammered.

Dresden stepped between Harry and Molly and the Aurors. Even though the wizard's voice was calm, Harry could see the tension bunching in Dresden's neck above the collar of the heavy black duster. "It's magic," Dresden said coolly.

After another minute of hard-staring and silent chest-thumping, Burton blew an impatient breath and waved Dresden aside. "Fine. Everyone line up over there. Remove all magical items you might be carrying for inspection. Your persons and possessions will be subject to search before you're allowed on the premises. You too, Hagrid."

"Righ', righ'," Hagrid sighed, and spread his arms.

One by one, Harry and the others were poked and prodded by the Aurors. Burton waved the brass rod over each of them while Frakes examined their wands. The carved blasting rod Dresden carried raised a few eyebrows, but they let it and his staff pass without comment. Next Burton swept their bags with the rod frowning and pausing every so often before continuing. Even Mouse wasn't exempt from the search, though he accepted it with panting curiosity.

Burton put the rod away at last and motioned toward the castle. "Proceed," he commanded. "But be aware, you may be stopped at any time and subjected to a similar search of your person as part of the Ministry's new security protocols."

"Welcome to Hogwarts," Frakes added. Then the two Aurors began walking the edge of the Forbidden Forest again, not giving Harry's group a second look.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck as he watched the men walk away. "Hagrid, what was that all about?" he said.

Hagrid sighed. "There's been a few changes, I'm 'fraid," he muttered. "If Dumbledore had ever seen a student treated like that, 'e'd have turned tha' Auror inside-out."

A flicker of movement caught Harry's attention. He glanced away from the two Aurors, only to see two more patrolling the edge of the lake. Four more milled silently at the docks, where the lantern-lit boats were beginning to approach. Looking up, Harry saw dark shapes moving back and forth across the walls of the castle and atop some of the towers. The grounds weren't as empty as he had thought.

"How many of them are there?" Harry asked.

"Dunno," Hagrid admitted. "Ministry keeps 'em coming in an' out. All part of the new 'security procedures' they got since las' year," he said, his voice tinged with bitterness.

"Nothing says 'howdy' like a friendly rubber glove up the back chute," Dresden said.

Harry felt his stomach drop at the sight of the Auror force patrolling Hogwarts. It was a far cry from the small team Tonks had kept at the school the previous year. This was an army. The Ministry had finally recognized the threat Harry had been warning them about for years.

But the sight of his home under such heavy guard didn't give Harry any feelings of victory. It just reminded him of how much danger they were all in, and how much he still had to do.


	10. Unpleasant Surprises

_**Chapter Ten**_

_**Unpleasant Surprises**_

* * *

McGonagall waited for them in the castle's entryway wearing a cross look on her face. Her foot tapped impatiently against the stone floor. "You are late," she said. "The First Years are nearly here."

"'Pologies, Professor," Hagrid said sheepishly.

"Yeah," added Dresden, grinning, "we hit some wicked traffic in the Jet Stream."

Harry did his best not to snigger, but McGonagall must have spied some kind of amusement on his face anyway, because her ire turned next to him. "Mister Potter, I suggest you change into your robes and find your way to the Great Hall," she said archly.

Waving her wand over her open hand, she produced a square of folded black cloth, which she handed to Harry. He glanced briefly at his trunk and wondered if she had taken one of his robes or simply transfigured one for him out of thin air. It unsettled him to think that McGonagall could fit him for robes with a simple thought.

As he took the robes, another thought occurred to him. He cast a sidelong glance at Molly, and said, "Just me, Professor?"

McGonagall's whole face puckered. "Exactly as I said, Potter. Miss Carpenter will accompany me, as will Professor Dresden. There are a few matters yet to discuss and preparations to make before the induction ceremonies begin."

Harry started to protest, but McGonagall's razor-edged scowl silenced him at once. Instead, he gave Molly a smile that he knew wasn't very convincing. She returned it in kind, hiding her nervousness poorly, and followed Dresden and McGonagall down the corridor. Mouse gave Harry one last nudge of his nose before he trotted after them.

Hagrid fidgeted uncomfortably in their abrupt solitude. "Well, I, er…I'd best get myself to the Hall too. But I'll make sure yer trunk gets where it needs t' be. And you lot'll come visit soon 's yer settled. Won't yeh?"

Harry's nod seemed to ease Hagrid enough for the enormous gamekeeper to excuse himself. As he left, Harry found himself alone in the corridor. He quickly found the solitude unbearable, and so hurried to the nearest lavatory to change.

When his robes were in place, he examined himself in the mirror above the sink. The sight of Gryffindor's shield emblazoned on his breast gave him pause. He stared back at his reflection, his heart rising into his throat as he realized that he was truly, honestly home again. The thought brought tears to his eyes. He pawed at his eyes, embarrassed, but they didn't stop until he forced himself away from the mirror.

He had convinced himself for so long that he would have to flee Hogwarts to keep it safe, to complete his mission. And when McGonagall had forced his plans awry, Harry had dreaded his return, certain that it would ruin his mission or endanger the friends he had sought to protect. But the thought of returning to his House, of sleeping in his proper bed, of going to class with his friends in the castle he had come to think of as his only true home, made his heart ache fiercely. He knew he was where he was meant to be, whether he wanted to be or not.

When the moment of nostalgia had passed, Harry dried his eyes and hurried to the Great Hall. Even before he rounded the corner, he could hear the chatter of students. The glow of the levitating candles spilled through the entryway and into the darkened corridor, drawing him in like a beacon.

He had to force himself not to run as he pushed into the Hall. Overhead, the enchanted ceiling was mimicking the last rays of sunset as they left the sky. Stars were beginning to appear on the far side of the hall where the horizon would be.

The student tables were stretched beneath the false sky in four symmetrical rows, just as they always had been. But even at first glance, Harry could tell that something was amiss. Each of the long tables had numerous gaps between students, large gaps too big to account for the First Years that still hadn't arrived. With a pang, Harry realized that many students hadn't returned to Hogwarts that year. He couldn't blame them or their parents. The school, formerly a place of relative safety, had been proven to be just as vulnerable to Death Eaters as anywhere else in the wizarding world.

"Harry!"

The familiar voice latched onto Harry and drew him through the rows of tables like a shot. He nearly knocked a pair of Second Years clean off their feet as he rushed into Hermione's waiting hug. His ribs creaked under the force of her embrace. A small part of him wondered if she would pick him up and twirl him around. But the majority of him was just as happy to see her.

As soon as he staggered out of Hermione's crushing hug, Ron pounded him on the back, almost bowling him off his feet. "Bloody glad to see you, Harry," he said, thumping Harry again.

Harry's grin threatened to tear his cheeks in two as he took in the sight of his two best friends. There were a dozen little changes written into them that reminded him how long the summer had been without them. Ron had somehow managed to grow even taller, though his slender frame still struggled to fill out his robes. And he had shorn his normally shaggy hair jarringly short, so short that it barely covered his scalp. Hermione had likewise cut her bushy brown hair and stuffed the rest into a stubby ponytail. Both of them looked leaner than Harry remembered, and their eyes looked sunken and tired.

They ushered him to a seat at the table with the other Seventh Years from Gryffindor. Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan both glanced back from their conversation with a pretty Sixth Year girl to nod a brief greeting to Harry. Sitting across the table, Neville beamed at him, though he didn't say anything, and quickly looked away. The rest of the table seemed content to ignore Harry. He was content to let them.

"You two look alright," said Harry, keeping his voice below the din of the room so that only Ron and Hermione could hear, and only by leaning close.

Hermione smiled wanly. "We look dreadful," she said. "We spent half the summer wondering if You-Know-Who really had caught up with you. There were a dozen different rumors floating about, and no one in the Order would tell us anything."

"We had to find out you were still alive from Fred and George, of all people," Ron added. "After that, McGonagall would at least tell us that you were alive. She said you were on some secret assignment for the Order, and wouldn't say one word more. Of course, I knew that was rubbish, and I never believed her for a second. I told her that you would never set one foot after You-Know-Who unless we were there with you." He nodded matter-of-factly.

Hermione rolled her eyes, forcing Harry to bite back a laugh. He guessed Ron hadn't been quite so convinced over the summer, probably resulting in a fair number of the arguments Fred and George had mentioned. When Harry thought of his meeting with the twins in Diagon Alley again, he paled a bit, and asked, "Did, er, Fred and George mention anything else about seeing me?"

"Mention what?" Ron asked too casually. "You mean the half-giant bloke from across the pond McGonagall was dragging around, or the new cover model girlfriend they caught you with?"

Harry swallowed hard and tried to sink further down into the bench. "That last bit, I suppose. I think they might have gotten the wrong idea."

"If they did, they weren't the only ones," Ron told him coolly. His eyes flicked to one side.

With a growing weight in the pit of his stomach, Harry turned to follow Ron's gaze, and saw Ginny sitting further down the row on the opposite side of the table. She was surrounded by a large group of friends—mostly boys, he noticed with some chagrin—and was talking animatedly with them. As he watched the conversation, Harry saw her laugh at something one of the boys said. The sight of her smile, of her crinkled eyes, twisted in his chest.

On a closer inspection, Harry could see that Ginny had changed as well. Her lustrous red hair was kept back in a plain black hairband, much like the one she had worn during their practices years ago in the Room of Requirement. There was a slight hollowness to her cheeks, a tightness much like Ron's and Hermione's that made Harry wonder if the rest of the Weasleys looked so haggard. It had obviously been a hard summer for them all, and it made Harry feel that much guiltier to have spent it in a hole in the ground half a world away.

The longer he stared, the more he noticed that something was odd. It wasn't until two or three of her entourage turned to meet his stare that he realized Ginny was refusing to look at him. She couldn't have missed his coming into the hall, not with the reception Hermione had given him. Her neck fairly trembled with the tension of not looking in his direction.

"Mind you, I'm a bit torn on the subject," Ron said. "On the one hand, I suppose I should beat the tar out of you for giving her that load of bollocks about leaving her to keep her safe and then finding yourself a summer fling. On the other," he continued, tilting his head the other way, "I don't have to live with the thought of my best mate snogging my sister anymore."

Hermione reached across Harry to swat Ron's arm. Then she said, "Harry, what were you doing all summer? Did you…learn anything?"

She could only mean their mission to find Voldemort's horcruxes. He shook his head. "No." Then he smirked, and added, "Which is funny, seeing as how I've been living with a teacher for the past two months."

At their confused looks, Harry began to tell them the condensed version of how McGonagall had essentially kidnapped him, and how he had come into the charge of their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. After a second of silent hesitation, he decided to leave out the part about the White Council. There was still too much he didn't understand about Dresden's wizarding world. He didn't know how to even begin explaining another governing body of wizards when he felt as though he barely understood his own.

What he did not omit, however, was McGonagall's utter betrayal and her tyrannical cooption of his mission. "She's got a trace on me," he said bitterly.

Hermione's jaw dropped even as Ron snorted. "What? A trace? But you're seventeen," Ron scoffed.

"This one's different than the Ministry's underage wizarding trace," Harry said, shaking his head. "She'll be able to find me no matter where I go, and bring me right back under her thumb."

"She did what?" Hermione gasped, her volume climbing high enough to earn her several glances from other Gryffindors. "That's unbelievable!"

Ron frowned, uncomprehending. "But…but you're seventeen," he insisted. "She can't…"

Hermione started to ask, "How did she manage—"

Waving the question aside, Harry snapped, "What does it matter? It doesn't change anything." He looked to either side, making sure that there weren't any curious glances aimed in their direction. Then he lowered his voice to a graveyard whisper, and continued, "We're still going to do what we have to. For Dumbledore."

Those last two words were not a reminder of who had given them their mission. It was a rallying cry, and even though he could barely hear the words himself, Harry saw them strike away any doubt Ron or Hermione might have had. Their expressions sobered, and they nodded.

"Right," Harry said in a louder, more congenial tone in case they had eavesdroppers after all. "Enough about me. What about you lot? What did I miss?"

"I guess that depends on what you already know," Ron said. He leaned against the table and jerked a thumb at Hermione. "For starters, this one finally achieved her lifelong dream."

Hermione shot Ron a sharp look through her furious, burning blush. When Harry gave her a questioning look, she sighed and pulled at the collar of her robes to reveal a golden badge shining brightly on her vest. At first, Harry mistook it for her prefect's badge. But when he read it again, his expression split into a grin. "You've been made Head Girl?"

A sarcastic noise jetted through Ron's nose. "Like they could have picked anyone else," he said.

Her blush worsened, and she looked as though she might fling something at Ron. "It's not like I asked for it, or even expected it," she said quickly. "And if we're going to be involved in 'extracurriculars,' then it could very well complicate matters. But…"

"It's been a long time coming," Harry assured her. "Congratulations, Hermione."

It felt odd to remember such things as prefects and head students as being important, especially with Voldemort breathing down his neck. But he was glad that teachers of Hogwarts, however aggravating they could be, still recognized Hermione's worth. If anything, she deserved a hundred badges, and all the honor and authority they might command. She had certainly earned them.

As if remembering, Ron drew out his prefect's badge from his pocket. He made it a point to pin it upside-down on the front of his robes. "Yeah, well, it's a shame that she has to share the honorable office with such utter pond scum," he said darkly.

Harry frowned confusedly until Ron pointed across the room. Turning his head, Harry's gaze wandered across the room, finally coming to the Slytherins' table at the opposite side. Immediately, he found a greasy, slicked-back head of hair, and felt his blood turn to ice.

As if feeling Harry's eyes pressing into him, the head turned. Draco Malfoy stared back at him. Malfoy looked pale, paler than he ever had in the previous year. His eyes widened and his lips parted in a look of gaping horror, as if he were just as shocked to see that Harry had returned to Hogwarts as well.

Harry felt Ron's hand on his shoulder. The gangly boy grunted as he yanked Harry hard onto the bench. Only then did he realize he had been standing up, his legs tensed as though ready to run across the room. "Harry, don't," Ron hissed. "You can't. Blimey, we thought you knew!"

Hermione's hand found his other shoulder. At her gentle insistence, Harry swung back around and put Malfoy behind him again. Even still, he kept his head turned to keep that greasy haircut at the edge of his vision. He would not turn his back on Malfoy, not completely. Never again.

"It's just awful," Hermione whispered. Her voice developed an ugly edge as she cast her own sidelong glance back at the Slytherin table. "I still can't believe he had the gall to come back after what he did. And to be made Head Boy, no less."

"You were right," Ron told her, "He thinks he's untouchable. And he probably nearly is, the rich, spineless git."

When Harry tried to respond, his voice failed him. It took him several tries before he could manage to speak. "How could he be here?" he demanded softly. "The last time I saw him, he was running for his life with Snape."

The mention of Snape's name choked him again. In the ensuing silence, Hermione gave him a concerned look, and said, "Then you really haven't heard? They—"

Hermione stopped talking when she noticed that hers was the only voice in the room. The rest of the students, and even the teachers, had fallen silent and turned to watch as McGonagall entered the Great Hall. Behind her, they could see the pintsized shapes of the First Years lining up in the corridor, waiting to be ushered in.

She swept past the tables, walking briskly. Her face was a stony mask. As she rounded the table, Hagrid set aside his enormous mug and rose from his seat. One by one, the other teachers followed suit. They did not clap, or even smile, but simply stood in reverent silence as Hogwarts' new headmaster took her place.

Except, she didn't. Harry expected McGonagall to seat herself in the headmaster's chair, but instead she went to her former place at its side. Then she joined the other teachers in staring at the empty chair. She bowed her head, lacing her hands together. It was hard to tell at a distance, but her lips might have been moving.

Were they going to leave Dumbledore's chair unoccupied? Harry couldn't really blame her. Being back at Hogwarts had reopened wounds that hadn't had time to fully close over the summer. The sight of the old headmaster's empty chair put a lump in Harry's throat, and he knew he wasn't alone. Hermione was blinking back obvious tears and trying to sniffle too softly to be heard. Ron's eyes had fallen to the table, his lips mashed together in a tight grimace.

No one spoke. Any words that had needed saying had been said at the funeral last spring. The students and teachers joined each other in a long moment of silence as they stared at the absence of Hogwarts' most crucial element.

Then, clearing her throat, McGonagall took her old seat. The rest of the teachers followed suit as she began to speak. "Before we proceed with the induction of our new students, I would like to tell you all how glad I am to see all of you returning to Hogwarts. In light of everything that has befallen our school, and of the troubling times we now face, I believe it is more important than ever that stand united. Only together may we triumph over adversity."

Harry suspected she wasn't just speaking generally. Her eyes pointedly avoided his direction.

"And so, in that spirit," McGonagall continued, her voice becoming officious, "I would like you all to join me in welcoming back our new headmaster, Professor Severus Snape."

The room shrank away from Harry's eyes and ears. He became deaf, blind, and dumb as McGonagall's gesture drew forth a swirl of dark cloak and hawkish features at the Hall's entrance. Snape moved with calm and measured steps through the tables. His face was drawn into tight lines, but no one watching could miss his smugness. He walked as though he already owned everything he surveyed. Which, of course, he now did.

Snape, the man that Harry detested perhaps even more than Voldemort, the man who had inflicted a hundred petty cruelties upon Harry for no reason but his own small-minded, impotent vengeance, the man who had let Sirius die and betrayed the Order of the Phoenix, circled the head table and took the seat of the man he had murdered.

"NO!"

The voice thundered over the smattering of awkward, uncertain applause of the students. The cheers and whistles resounding from the Slytherins' table ceased at once. Harry again felt Ron and Hermione pulling desperately at his shoulders, and realized that he was the one who had shouted. He stood from the bench, squaring his shoulders against the shocked looks of the entire room, and met Snape's eyes with a look meant to kill him.

Arching an eyebrow, Snape broke from Harry's baleful stare without blinking, and said, "Thank you, Professor McGonagall. And to all our returning students: welcome."

Harry's ears were still ringing when his friends finally pushed him back into his seat. His whole body trembled. He clenched his fist until his knuckles hurt. He clenched his jaw until he thought his teeth would shatter. If not for Hermione's hand on his arm, he would have drawn his wand and finished what he had started that night four months ago.

"Like I said," whispered Ron, " we thought you knew."

As Harry seethed, Snape spread his hands for a silence that was already there. "I would like to make a few announcements before the sorting ceremony begins," Snape continued, either oblivious or unconcerned with Harry's rage. "Firstly, Professor Slughorn has agreed to resume his old post as head of Slytherin. I expect you will show him the same courtesy and respect which which you favored me. I still expect great things from my former house this year. I know you will not disappoint me.

"Next," Snape continued, "you have undoubtedly noticed the presence of several Aurors on the school premises. No doubt you reviewed the informational letter sent via owl to all students' families, but for those of you who were remiss in their correspondence, allow me to review these new circumstances." Snape's eyes hardened into dark pools of ice. "The Aurors are here by order of Minister Scrimgeour himself. They are to be obeyed at all times. All students and their belongings are subject to search and seizure at an Auror's discretion for the purposes of school safety as that Auror sees fit.

"Failure to comply," Snape added, and let his beak of a nose drift ever so slightly toward the Gryffindor table, "can and will result in expulsion."

Harry's lip curled at the thought of the two thugs guarding the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and of the dozens of Aurors he saw patrolling the grounds in his brief walk inside. He almost wanted one of them to try and seize his belongings just to see what he would do. Maybe he wasn't an Auror yet, but he knew a few tricks of his own, and he had beaten full grown wizards who had eluded such Aurors for years. Let Snape try to intimidate him with his militia.

"And lastly," said Snape, "thanks to the efforts of Professor McGonagall, we have a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year. So please welcome Professor Dresden to our school."

At Snape's gesture, the students turned. Even before their eyes reached the entrance, they heard the sound of footsteps accompanied by soft, metallic jingling. Dresden stepped out of the shadows and strode into the Great Hall. He wore his leather duster over a mashed-down set of black robes, and carried his carved staff with him, letting it _thump_ against the stone every few steps.

But the things that everyone would remember were the cowboy boots swishing at the hem of Dresden's robes and the silver spurs chiming on his heels. They would remember the odd hat, which they would later learn was a Stetson, perched atop his messy dark hair. And they would remember him meeting their dead silence with a cheesy, satisfied grin.

Dresden walked to the teacher's table, ignoring their baffled looks and McGonagall's scowl. As he turned to the students, he tipped the brim of his hat, and said loudly, "Howdy, everybody. Excited to be here. This is a great castle, am I right? Really tall parapets. Great word, too: parapets. How often do you get to say parapets?"

"…yes. Thank you, Professor Dresden," said Snape. "If you'll please take your seat?"

The way Snape said it made it obvious to everyone that he wasn't making a polite request. Dresden just smiled wider and nodded, even adding an officious little half-bow before he sauntered around the table. He gave each footfall its own beat, letting everyone hear the spurs ringing as he sat at the last spot at the end. This time there were snickers from some of the other students, and hushed voices to accompany them. Snape's face curled in barely-contained annoyance.

When Snape's silence dragged on too long, McGonagall cleared her throat, quelling the giggles and whispers of the students. "And, as an added pleasure," she said, "Professor Dresden's apprentice, Miss Molly Carpenter, has accompanied him to Hogwarts, and will be joining us for the school year. Given her previous experience, she will be taking classes with the Seventh Years."

Now Molly entered the Great Hall, followed shortly by the diminutive Professor Flitwick and his gaggle of First Years in their neat, nervous little rows. Flitwick instructed the First Years to wait by the entrance before he followed after Molly. A saggy fold of old, dark canvas was tucked under his elbow.

Molly didn't look much more confident than the children behind her, but she managed a shaky smile as she crossed the Hall to stand before the teachers. When she spotted Harry in the crowd, her smile filled out, and she winked. He winked back.

Ron could barely muster his voice as Molly walked by. He craned his neck to follow her down the rows. "Bloody hell, Harry," he whispered. "That's the girl Fred and George caught you with? Now I really want to murder you!"

"We're just friends," Harry whispered back firmly.

"Don't get me wrong," Ron said, as if he hadn't been listening. "I want to shake your hand, too. What's your secret? Do all the girls in America look like that?"

Hermione's eyes sparked dangerously. "Oh, come off it, Ron," she hissed.

There was plenty of whispering, and most of it was coming from the girls. The boys of the school were otherwise occupied collecting their jaws from the floor. Molly caught on to the attention immediately and put it to good use, demurely flipping her two-toned hair from her shockingly blue eyes as she ratcheted her smile to a nearly blinding setting. As Molly reached the teachers' table and turned, McGonagall had to clear her throat twice more to restore order.

"Being that these are special circumstances," McGonagall said primly, "we will begin our sorting ceremony with Miss Carpenter first, and then proceed to the sorting of the First Years."

Flitwick, who had tottered invisibly in Molly's wake, waved his wand over the bare floor and transfigured a stool, upon which he sat the fold of cloth. It unfurled itself into the familiar shape of the Sorting Hat. Molly gasped and recoiled as the musty tear that formed its mouth split for a breath. Evidently, no one had explained to her exactly what sorting would entail.

Harry leaned forward, anxious to listen. He had only heard the Sorting Hat's song a few times before, and wondered what its song would be this year.

But to everyone's surprise, the old hat did not sing. Its voice rose in a mournful tenor as it spoke plainly and briefly.

_In times of dread, in days of fear,_

_What matters most is gathered near,_

_The fallen father's wisdom heed,_

_Unite as one in voice and deed._

Once more, silence echoed in the Great Hall. The older students were flabbergasted by the Hat's refusal to sing. As Ron had once surmised, the Hat would spend a whole school year thinking up the next year's song. It had little else to do.

Harry understood, though. He remembered the Hat sharing Dumbledore's office, probably for many decades. It wasn't simply the students and teachers who missed him. Even the castle itself, and its myriad wonders, mourned for the old wizard's loss.

Before the confused murmurs could grow into anything more, Professor Flitwick held up his hands, calling for silence. Then he began a soft conversation with Molly, who gathered herself as best she could on the stool sized for eleven-year-old children.

"Harry, did you tell her anything about…?" Hermione's whisper trailed off.

Letting his glance drift to Snape, Harry felt an icy knife stab at his chest, and growled, "Wouldn't have mattered if I had. Clearly I don't know what's going on myself."

Hermione sighed softly. "If she's from America as well, it's possible that the Death Eaters have never gotten to her. Do you think we could trust her?"

Harry nodded. "There's no chance the Death Eaters ever got to her, or to Dresden" he murmured. He decided to leave out the fact that it was because neither Molly nor her mentor could even fathom what a Death Eater really was.

"They'd wind up in two pieces if they tried," Ron said dreamily, still staring. "She's an amazon, that one."

Even through her annoyance with Ron, Harry could tell that Hermione was relieved. Truthfully, so was he. All of the horrible possibilities he had imagined himself finding at Hogwarts paled in comparison to Snape's return. It had been the one silver lining to the horror of the past year, that Snape was finally revealed as the snake Harry knew him to be. Now that snake was running his school, threatening his friends, all after having gotten away with murder.

And Malfoy's return brought a whole host of new complications. Malfoy may have hesitated to kill Dumbledore, but somehow Harry couldn't imagine the sneering boy hesitating to kill him. Most of Slytherin, if not all of it, would jump at Malfoy's command, which meant as many as one quarter of the students at Hogwarts could be out for Harry's blood.

Not only could Molly be trusted, but she had to be. Too many of Harry's friends, even those from the days of Dumbledore's Army, could become liabilities. They had families of their own to worry about if and when Harry's confrontation with Voldemort became an open one. Molly's family was safe, half a world away and under the auspices of an entirely different wizard's court. Perhaps Dresden was likewise disconnected, but he was just another of McGonagall's tools, another attempt to control him.

As Flitwick lowered the Sorting Hat onto Molly's head, Harry felt a swell of relief at the thought of Molly being there with them.

"SLYTHERIN!" cried the Sorting Hat.


	11. Pyrofuego

_**Chapter Eleven**_

_**Pyrofuego**_

* * *

The students filed out of the Great Hall in droves, drowsy with food and the weariness of a long day's journey. As they wandered into the corridor, they began to split into four distinct colors, each moving toward their respective house's common room.

"First Years, follow your house prefects," Hermione called primly.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Ron added, "Try not to wander off. The castle gets hungry after being empty all summer."

"Ron!" Hermione snapped, rounding on him with a stern expression.

"What? I'm only giving them fair warning," Ron said, grinning.

Harry drifted behind his friends as they began bickering. The flow of the students around him kept him moving forward. Thoughts whirled in his head, and his empty stomach grumbled. His appetite had withered at the sight of Snape's triumphant return to Hogwarts.

Seeing Snape had been shocking, but Harry had to admit that he should at least been prepared for something of the like. The slimy Death Eater had escaped justice the night Harry's parents had been murdered. He was practiced at the art of ducking responsibility for his crimes. But to make Snape headmaster of the school? What could the school's governors been thinking?

And then, with a chill, Harry remembered the other time the governors had made such a choice. They had sacked Dumbledore at the bullying behest of Lucius Malfoy. Could the elder Malfoy have exerted such influence from his cell in Azkaban again? Or did the Death Eaters have a new voice among the governors? Any or all of them might be Imperiused puppets of Voldemort himself.

Through the sea of heads, Harry spotted the slicked hair of Draco Malfoy. He scowled at the back of Malfoy's head and forced his hand away from his wand. Malfoy and Snape returning at the same time was a brazen show of arrogance by the Death Eaters'. The mere presence of Dumbledore's two killers was the second salvo in this new war. Harry swore to himself that the next move would be his.

A tall set of robes blocked his view of Malfoy. He looked up and saw a short shock of pink and white hair. As if sensing his attention, Molly turned her head and gave him a nervous smile. The other Slytherins herded her around a corner toward their common room before Harry could offer an expression in reply.

His stomach churned to think of Molly wearing green and silver. He thought he had come to know her well during their morning talks in Dresden's basement hovel. But if the hat had seen a Slytherin in her, then what did that mean? And what did it say about her teacher, the man who was supposed to be teaching Hogwarts students how to defend themselves?

Harry was so lost in thought that he never saw Ginny until he almost walked over her. She stood at the base of the stairs, letting the other Gryffindors walk around her to climb to their rooms.

Ginny stared at him, saying nothing. Biting his lip, Harry stopped before her, waiting for her to say something. But she just kept staring at him. Her face was an unreadable mask.

Further up the staircase, Hermione glanced back at him with an apologetic grimace. "Come on, Ron. Let's make sure the First Years find their rooms."

Ron stared expectantly at Harry and Ginny, pointedly ignoring Hermione's tugging on his elbow. "Let the Fifth Years do it." Then he yowled as Hermione pinched his arm, and snapped, "Fine, all right!"

As his friends led the remaining Gryffindor stragglers up the staircase, Harry found himself alone with Ginny. He kept hoping that she would say something, but she seemed a statue, staring at him with glistening, unblinking eyes.

After long, agonizing moments, Harry abandoned his brain's efforts at finding something worthwhile to say, and simply stammered, "Er, hello. Did you have a nice summer?"

He didn't have longer than a second to kick himself for saying such an asinine thing before Ginny flew at him and threw her arms around him. She buried her face in his neck, her breath emerging in shuddering gasps.

"I was so afraid," she whispered. Something warm and wet touched Harry's neck as she clutched at him, wrapping her fingers into the folds of his robe. "I thought I would never see you again."

The force of her embrace drove the air out of him. It was all he could do to lift his arms and return the hug. Gradually, her grip lessened into something that would let him breathe again. "It's good to see you too, Ginny. It's not how I wanted to come back, but..."

Ginny drew away, and Harry was struck dumb by the scent of strawberries as her hair was drawn across his shoulder. They both pretended to not see her wiping her eyes with her sleeves. Her brown eyes shimmered as she looked up at him, and said, "Harry, why have you come back? Where were you all this time?.

"Um..."

"When you disappeared, I thought that you had finally started whatever it was you had to do," she said, her words tumbling out so quickly that they began to blur together. "But then Fred and George saw you in the shop with those strange wizards, and now you've come back with them, and I have no idea what's going on! Snape is back, Malfoy's back, and Ron and Hermione and Mum and Dad and the whole Order won't tell me anything!"

"I..." Harry's mouth snapped shut. He didn't even know where to begin.

Her voice dropped again, quavering, as she said, "Did you think of me at all? Even a little?"

He almost sighed with relief at having a question he knew how to answer. "Yes, all the time," he said. "I really missed you, Ginny."

Half a smile quirked Ginny's lips. "Given the company you were keeping, I wondered for a moment if you even remembered my name."

"Who, Molly?" He chuckled a little too loudly, shaking his head. "Not a bit. I thought about you the entire time, even when Molly and I—"

Then he bit down on his tongue. He felt his stomach drop as Ginny's eyes went wide. "When you and Molly what?" she asked.

A guttering sound escaped Harry's throat as he tried desperately to say anything to her. Sweat broke out all over his scalp, and his hands suddenly felt awkward and out of place. He folded them under his armpits and felt even more sweat starting to seep through his robes.

Ginny's whole expression puckered. She tilted her head, her eyes narrowed. "When you and Molly what?" she asked again, her voice dropping an octave and cooling to subzero temperatures.

The memory of a chocolate chip kiss tingled in Harry's mouth. He fumbled, trying to think of an excuse or denial . He had just started thinking of an apology when he heard footfalls coming from around the staircase. "Ginny, do we have to talk about this here?" he stammered, trying to crane his neck to see who it was.

"Don't try to change the subject," Ginny said peevishly.

"I'm not trying to change the subject," he snapped back, growing annoyed. "I just thought we might like to talk about this..."

As the footsteps continued, a thinning head of gray hair passed high around the staircase's banister. Piercing eyes followed half a step later, and locked on Harry at once. The gaze was a pure, icy blue that chilled Harry to the bone with just one look. Scarred lips curled to reveal sharpened teeth at the sight of the two teens at the foot of the stairs.

"...somewhere else," Harry trailed off, his voice shrinking. Ginny heard the fear in his voice and turned. Then she gasped, backing away until she her back was pressed to Harry's chest.

Fenrir Greyback grasped the banister, favoring the two students with a predatory smile. He wore shabby gray robes mottled with dark stains. A faint coppery stench wafted off of him. "Well, well," Greyback said, his voice rumbling from deep within his chest. "Isn't this a nice surprise?"

Harry fumbled for his wand, almost ripping his robes apart to draw it from his pockets. He noticed with a dim, distant feeling of relief that Ginny had drawn her wand even faster. Together, they kept Greyback under the point of their wands. The trembling fear inside Harry wanted him to cry an alarm to the rest of the school, but he was afraid that would only force the Death Eater's hand.

His mind raced, trying to piece together how Greyback had gotten into the school and, more importantly, what he was doing there. He hadn't seen Greyback since the battle at Hogwarts last fall, when Malfoy had smuggled a load of Death Eaters into the castle through the vanishing cabinet. Had Greyback used the cabinet again? Could the teachers really have not disposed of such a dangerous backdoor?

"You're not exactly the one I was hoping to find here, Potter," Greyback said. His growling tone dripped with bemusement. As he ran his hand down the banister, flecks of stone chipped away beneath his nails. "But then, I don't suppose the Dark Lord will mind too much if I present him with your pelt. Missed opportunities aren't something he's keen on."

As the Death Eater took a small step forward, Harry jittered back, jabbing his wand at the large, blood-stained man. Ginny followed suit and, though she was shaking, she didn't try to run. "That's far enough!" Harry snapped.

Greyback stopped and raised his hands. He grinned at the unsteady tip of Harry's wand, which made Harry swallow hard and curse inwardly. "Oh, I know that look," Greyback purred, locking his icy eyes with Harry's. "I've seen that look in a hundred children. Trying to remember when the last full moon was? Wondering just how much trouble you're in?"

"I'm thinking your hands are empty," Ginny tried to taunt back, gesturing with her wand. "Try to remedy that, and you'll have a tour of the castle, chin-first, starting with that very solid wall behind you."

His grin sharpened. "My, but you're a tough one," he said, feigning surrender. Then he laughed, and said, "The only trouble is, little pup, I don't need a wand."

The cuff of Greyback's robes slid down his raised arms. Harry saw the bracelet at once. It was a large, thick band of gleaming metal, the front of which had innumerable tiny figures and symbols carved into it. The bracelet had been sized much too large so that it had settled halfway down the Death Eater's brawny forearm.

"And I don't need the moon, either," Greyback added. "_Lupus_,_ lupara_,_ luparoso_."

The incantation was obviously well-practiced. Greyback had said the words too quickly, and even as Harry flung a stunning spell into Greyback, it struck the front of the Death Eater's splitting robes and rolled off of hairy flesh.

Harry had only seen the transformation once, years ago, when the light of the full moon had twisted Remus Lupin's body into a grotesque mockery of nature. The sound of creaking, snapping bones had risen above Lupin's howls as his skin bulged and split and re-knit into a terrifying monster.

Greyback's transformation was nothing like Lupin's. It was frighteningly quick. By the time Ginny had finished gasping, and Harry's spell had dissipated into swirls of red light, the Death Eater had transformed. The robes sloughed from him, revealing thick tufts of matted gray hair covering a body of lean, wiry muscle. A wrist as big around as Harry's leg grew into the silver bracelet until it all but vanished into fur.

The werewolf stared at the children, his long face drawing into a cruel impression of a smile. Then he raised his gnarled hands, brandishing claws like kitchen knives, and pounced.

Instinct screamed for Harry to run. Luckily, his practice won out, and he dropped down, shielding Ginny with his body. Ginny was only a hair's breadth behind him in shouting, "_Protego_!"

They had drilled such a maneuver in Dumbledore's Army a hundred times. Harry hadn't had time to catch his breath for another incantation. Getting close made it easier for Ginny to protect them both with a single shield charm. Just like in practice, the maneuver worked perfectly, only instead of Ron's hex, it was Greyback that skewed off of the top of Ginny's shield.

Sparks showered Harry and Ginny as Greyback tore into the blue aura above them.. Then the werewolf landed behind them, his claws tearing through the stone floor as he scrambled to attack again. Harry had no intention of standing there and letting him, and so he pushed Ginny into a mad dash around the base of the staircase, back the way Greyback had come.

Ginny dangled from the end of his arm as she ran behind Harry. The bones in his hand were nearly turned to powder with the force of her terrified grip. "I've never seen a spell slide off of anyone like that!" she puffed. "He didn't even counter it!"

"Spells don't work as well on werewolves," Harry answered breathlessly, and dragged Ginny around a corner. He heard Greyback skid past the intersection behind them and scrape at the stone to follow. Not daring to look back, Harry just ran harder. "It's part of the reason other wizards don't much care for them."

"I've never seen one transform up close. The state of Remus's clothes makes a bit more sense now," Ginny said. "What do we do, Harry?"

He didn't have a good answer until he saw two people turn the corner ahead of them. Harry recognized them as two of the many Aurors now infesting Hogwarts. The man and woman jolted at the sight of the two students running at them. The man's dark features twisted into a scowl.

"Students aren't permitted—" the man started to say in a deep voice.

"Death Eater!" Harry shouted, and stumbled to a halt in front of the Aurors.

"Werewolf!" Ginny added. She couldn't stop in time, and slammed into Harry's back, sending both of them to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

The woman arched a wispy blonde eyebrow, and said skeptically, "Well, which is it?"

A skittering noise answered her from far down the hall. Harry turned to see Greyback at the corner he and Ginny had rounded. Tatters of the Death Eater's cloak ribboned behind him as he charged them on all fours, his jaws slavering. His eyes were wholly black, and they glistened with hunger.

Swallowing another impulse to run, Harry aimed his wand at the oncoming beast. "If we—" he started to say.

The tall man took Harry firmly by the shoulders and shoved him backwards. The woman did the same with Ginny, so that both of them ended up behind the Aurors.

"Go!" the woman shouted back at Harry. "Raise the alarm!"

Those were her last words.

Even Harry had underestimated how quickly Greyback could move. With a single leap, the werewolf crossed the rest of the hall and bowled into the two Aurors. The man managed to cast a hex squarely into Greyback's chest before an offhanded sweep of one claw knocked the man off his feet.

Greyback sighted the woman at once, staring at her through wisps of the other Auror's fizzled spell. His claw shot forward, pinning the Auror to the wall. His palm encompassed her entire chest, and the tips of his claws sank into the wall as though the stone were a soft pine. Twisting his hips, Greyback simply pushed, and the woman's chest collapsed. Her head jerked to the side, and her eyes grew dark. Whatever scream she could have mustered became a wet cough.

As the Auror's body slumped to the floor, Harry heard a very small, very detached part of his mind wonder why the werewolf wasn't using its teeth or claws. As he watched Greyback trap the prone man under a paw, presumably to do the same, Harry suddenly realized that Greyback hadn't howled, or barked. He'd hardly growled. He had gotten in undetected, and he wanted it to stay that way. If no one had heard Harry and Ginny screaming—which they hadn't, based on the fact that there weren't twenty more Aurors storming the corridor—Greyback could kill them and continue on his way, leaving four crushed bodies and no evidence of a rampaging werewolf besides a few odd marks on the floor.

But if that were true, it meant that Greyback had learned how to retain some element of his human intelligence while transformed. It meant that Greyback was an unstoppable inhuman predator with the intellect of a dangerous wizard. Harry couldn't imagine something like that being possible.

"_Expecto Patronum_!" Harry cried.

Blue and silver light exploded from Harry's wand. The light swirled together into the shape of a brilliant, ephemeral stag. His Patronus charged forward even as it was forming. Its hooves left ripples of silver light when they touched the floor.

The stag's horn clipped Greyback in his beady eye. He reeled back, snarling. His claw lifted from the chest of the unconscious Auror. The blow didn't so much as ruffle Greyback's fur, and the Patronus bounded on, streaking down the corridor and disappearing around a corner.

With a bubbling growl, Greyback focused his empty eyes on Harry again. It left the unconscious Auror behind and lunged.

As Harry turned to run, knowing it would be too little, too late, he saw a flash of dark fabric beside him. Ginny had thrown the robes from her shoulders, leaving her in her gray jacket and skirt as she tossed the garment forward. Her wand flicked, and she cried, "_Murus Petrificus_!"

The corners of the robes stretched at once to grab the four corners of the corridor. Their black color transformed into a mottled gray as the fabric thickened, ballooning into a stone wall almost a foot thick. Harry and Ginny both jumped as they heard Greyback crash into the new wall. The wall jittered and cracked, but it held, and continued to hold as clawed fists began to hammer at it from the opposite side.

"I'll have to remember that one," Harry said, not bothering to hide the astonishment in his voice. Such a quick and precise conjuration was well ahead of what he could manage in Transfigurations. He'd never struggled in Professor McGonagall's classes, but he had never excelled in them. Clearly Ginny had.

More cracks appeared in the stone wall with each new blow the werewolf struck it. Ginny grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him down the hall. "It's useless if we don't get a head start out of it."

Even as Ginny led the way, Harry could tell they were heading back to the Great Hall. The chase had almost circled the entire bottom floor of the castle, and his lungs were starting to make him pay for it. He peered around the fluttering ends of Ginny's hair at the closed doors of the hall. The students had all gone to bed, and the teachers were nowhere to be found.

The same corridor he had walked earlier with Ron and Hermione yawned ahead of them. If they could just keep ahead of Greyback long enough, they might attract enough attention to make another stand.

And then a gray blur passed above them. Harry looked up in time to see long, taloned hind-claws dart overhead. Neat little holes were left in the stone where they had passed. Greyback had leapt onto the ceiling and actually kept pace with them merely by crawling.

Then the werewolf dropped from the ceiling. His claws flashed and his fangs snapped. Harry jerked Ginny to a halt just ahead of Greyback's swipe. She shrieked and stumbled, falling at Harry's feet and almost tripping him. He managed to step over her, putting himself between her and Greyback, for all the good it would do. His wand was only halfway raised as Greyback's jaws loomed above him.

"_Forzare_!"

The bellow came from behind Harry. An instant later, he felt a roar of wind next to his ear, as though a bullet had whizzed past without ever having been there in the first place. Something invisible struck Greyback and bowled him off his clawed feet with the force of a wrecking ball. The werewolf tumbled backwards in a snarl of limbs and struck the wall hard nearly twenty meters away where the corridor began to curve.

They heard the jingling of spurs before they turned around and saw Professor Dresden at the opposite end of the corridor. The wizard's Stetson was only a few inches from brushing the corridor ceiling, and his cloak billowed in the wake of his spell. The runes on his upraised staff burned with reddish light. Behind him, a blue stag stomped its hoof, the motion chiming and rippling with silver light.

"So, I got turned around and decided to retrace my steps," Dresden said. He jerked his chin back toward the ethereal stag, and continued, "Then I nearly get run over by Rudolph's half-Smurf cousin, who won't leave me alone until I follow him. And who should I find but Hog-warts' chief troublemaker already picking fights in the hallway after curfew?"

The stag gave a silent snort, tossing its head at Harry. Then it dissipated into a vanishing cloud of blue light. Dresden gave a start at the evaporating creature.

A wave of relief cascaded through Harry. He had known all along that his Patronus wouldn't do any real harm to a werewolf. But he had cast the charm with the silent command for his stag to make as much of a nuisance of itself as it could to the first people it found, and then lead them back toward Harry as quickly as it could.

"Professor!" Harry cried. He hauled Ginny to her feet as Dresden stormed up to them. Before Harry could say anything else, the American wizard had sidled past them both. Dresden pulled at something around his neck, snapping the chain of an amulet of some kind.

"You don't waste time with small problems, do you, Goggles," Dresden said. There wasn't a single ounce of humor in his voice. "When did you piss off a freaking loup-garou?"

"A what?" Harry asked.

"A werewolf," Dresden said. "The worst kind of werewolf, actually. We'd be good and screwed if I hadn't come prepared."

A basso growl rumbled in the air, so deep that Harry could feel it in his chest. He glanced down the hall and blanched at the sight of Greyback rising from the floor. The blow Dresden had given him should have pulped the werewolf's innards. Instead, Greyback howled and charged, moving with the same inhuman speed that had overcome the two Aurors with ease.

Dresden passed back his heavy oaken staff, which Ginny took, giving the odd implement a frown. Then the wizard drew a second stick from under his coat and aimed its tip down the hall. Though shorter than his staff, the other stick was easily two feet long. More carved runes on the stick lit with reddish light, and the smell of brimstone filled the corridor. Harry recognized the stick at once, and knew what to expect as Dresden bellowed, "_Fuego_!"

A column of fire as thick as a telephone pole sprayed down the corridor. Black scars were seared into the walls and floor as the fire sprayed off of Greyback in every direction. The air rippled with the backlash of heat, making Harry flinch away from the blinding brightness of Dresden's spell. Even still, he could see that the flames did nothing but enrage the rampaging werewolf, who forded up the fiery stream toward the wizard projecting it.

Then Harry saw a second light emerge from Dresden. The amulet dangling from the wizard's other hand lit with blue-white light. Something about the light struck Harry as familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. As he watched, the glow intensified. Dresden began to spin the amulet by its chain in a tight circle around his fist.

As the werewolf pounced, Dresden abruptly cut his fiery spell. He swung his whole body around, his coat whirling about him, and flung the amulet with a cry of, "_Ventas Servitas_!"

The amulet rocketed from Dresden's grasp. Leaving a silvery blue contrail in its wake, the amulet pierced the fading haze of fire and struck Greyback. The werewolf's pounce became an uncontrollable spiral as he shrieked with the blow. He struck the floor at Dresden's feet, landing in a half-heaped crouch.

Harry's eyes darted to a fading glow where the amulet's contrail had ended, high up on one of the Great Hall's doors. The pentacle charm had embedded itself in the wood. Whatever magic Dresden had used to empower it was rapidly running out.

A blotch of dark red began to creep into Greyback's fur at his shoulder. He wrapped his claw around the wound, glaring daggers at Dresden.

The wizard had only grazed him.

"Nice throw, Harry," professor say under his breath, barely audible to Harry above the thudding of his own heart. "Hell's bells."

Flecks of blood sprayed from Greyback's claw as it shot forward. His claw wrapped all the way around Dresden's waist and lifted him from the floor. Greyback snapped at Dresden's head, fangs dripping with anticipation. The werewolf found purchase on something and twisted the wizard bodily, tearing with his jaws and flinging what remained of Dresden aside. The thick, oaken doors of the Great Hall burst off their hinges as Dresden flew through them.

When Greyback turned back to Harry and Ginny, he had the twisted remains of a Stetson stuck between his teeth. He pawed at the hat, ripping it to shreds with a gesture, and advanced on the two students.

"_Stupefy_! _Stupefy_!" Harry flung stunning charms into the werewolf's face. The jets of magic only seemed to enrage Greyback more. "Ginny, run! _Stupefy_!"

Ginny didn't run. Instead, she jabbed her wand straight into the face of the looming werewolf, and bellowed, "_Vespertilio Naris_!"

The werewolf's empty eyes flicked to Ginny. Its lips curled, and its teeth descended.

Then Greyback stopped. His eyes widened, and he reeled back, his snarl descending into a high-pitched whine. He clawed at his snout with both hands, barking and snarling and pitching a fit. Suddenly, his hands were blown aside as a swarm of shrieking bats exploded from either nostril. The greenish-black creatures flocked around Greyback's head as more and more of them poured out. Their wings beat at the werewolf's head, and their tiny claws swarmed over his fur.

"Okay," Ginny cried, and grasped Harry's hand. "Now we run!" They ducked under the swarm of Ginny's Bat-Bogey hex and darted into the Great Hall."

Dresden lay in the middle of the hall, piled in the ruins of the bench that had caught him. Harry dropped to the professor's side and brushed at the splinters covering him. Rolling Dresden over, Harry was relieved and astonished to find the man relatively unscathed. There was a nasty cut on his forehead where Greyback's teeth had gotten too close, and a bruise on his cheek, probably from his tumble. But otherwise, Harry couldn't find so much as a cut as he pulled back the sleeves and lapels of Dresden's black coat.

Groaning, Dresden waved away Harry's hands. He sat up and said, "Where...?"

"Not far," Harry said. "He made quick work of your hat. He'll soon want the rest, I imagine."

Dresden groaned again. "Murphy told me the hat looked stupid anyway," he said. As he wiped at the blood on his face, he discovered a broken stump of wood still clutched in his fist. It was the remains of his overlong fire wand. "Oh, great. More good news. Where's my staff, Goggles?"

Harry realized with a start that he had dropped Dresden's magical implement when he had started flinging useless spells in Greyback's face. He looked toward the empty doorway of the Great Hall, and his blood ran cold. Dresden's gaze followed Harry's, and they watched together as Greyback staggered in after them.

The last of Ginny's conjured bats burst into a wave of viscous liquid and splattered on the floor as the werewolf backhanded it out of the air. In his other claw, he clutched the forgotten staff. Greyback snarled and held the thick wooden implement above his head. Simply clenching his fist, he snapped the staff as though it were a twig. Then he tossed the ruined wood aside and began to advance on the three wizards.

With help from the nearby table, Dresden struggled back to his feet. "Dick move, werewolf. Dick move," he growled.

"Any chance you have another hex like that one, Ginny?" Harry asked, never taking his eyes off the werewolf as it stalked them between the tables.

Her voice quavered. "I put everything I had into that last one. He's lucky he still even has a nose. There's nothing left in there for me to transfigure."

Harry knew they were lucky she had been able to transfigure any part of the werewolf at all. He heard some distant ruckus coming through the doors, and wondered if someone else in the castle had finally noticed their intruder. Judging by how far away they were, they would arrive in time to see Greyback finish tearing the three of them limb from limb.

"I need my amulet," Dresden said in a commanding tone that snapped Harry back to attention. "Unless one of you has an inherited silver anything on you right now?"

Harry shook his head. "I can get the amulet," he said. Eyeing the oncoming werewolf, he added, "If I can get a clear shot."

Dresden dug into his pockets and produced his wand. Harry wanted to scream at the wizard for not having it out in the first place, but there wasn't time. Greyback crouched low before them, getting ready to pounce again. "You two go," Dresden said. "I'll hit him with everything I've got. It might by you a second."

Nodding, Harry shared a last glance with Ginny to see if she was ready. She nodded, and together, they jumped up the nearest bench and vaulted the table. Focusing on the door, Harry flicked his wand, and cried, "_Accio_—"

He had thought Greyback would remain focused on Dresden, who still stood squared off with the werewolf. But he had been wrong. Harry's sudden jump had grabbed the beast's notice and sent him pouncing in the wrong direction. Even as Harry tried to cast the charm to summon Dresden's amulet to his hand, he felt an enormous claw wrap around his ankle and throw him onto the table. He heard Ginny scream his name through the ringing in his ears.

Then he heard Dresden yell, "_Fuego_! _Pyrofuego_!"

And the world turned white.

The back of Harry's leg blistered in an unbearable heat. He screamed, trying to jerk away, but the grasp around his leg remain. The hairs on the back of his neck sizzled, and he felt the table under him buckle and collapse. Through his clenched eyes he could still see a white, piercing, blinding flash that seemed to go on forever.

After two long seconds, the light vanished as quickly as it had come. Harry gasped and rolled onto his side, clutching at his burned leg. He felt the leathery hide of Greyback's claws. His eyes flew open in a panic.

Greyback's gnarled, fearsome hand remained clamped around his ankle. That, and about half of the forearm, was all that remained of the werewolf. The severed limb dangled from Harry's foot in a rigor grip, its fur aflame, choking the air with the smell of burning hair and roasted flesh. The silver bracelet remained around the claw's wrist, shimmering and heat-warped.

It was three tries before Ginny's repeated screaming of his name pulled Harry's attention away from the disembodied hand. She hunched over him, patting at places on Harry's robes where the heat had made them catch flame. The table he had fallen on was tilted and broken. Half its legs had vanished with the spell that had consumed the werewolf.

"What is going on here?" a snide voice clamored from the doorway. Snape stood atop the broken doors in a belted silken robe, and was backed by at least ten Aurors, who gaped at the wreckage of the Great Hall. McGonagall had come as well. Like Snape, she wore robes over bedclothes, and looked even more shocked than the Aurors did.

The wall next to the doors was missing a perfect circle of stone nearly ten feet across. The edge of the circle still glowed red, and the stone around it slumped like melted butter. Through the hole, the hallway wall outside looked to be in worse shape, with a cascade of melted stone pooling at its base.

Slowly, Harry's eyes trailed back to the source of the devastation. Standing at the other end of the line of melted stone and flaming tables was Professor Dresden. His wand was still raised and pointed at the hole in the wall. His eyes were wide and wild. With obvious effort, Dresden forced his wand down to his side.

"Your werewolves can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" Dresden crowed.

Harry wondered if he was the only one to notice the tall wizard's wand shaking in his grasp.


	12. The Den of the Snake

_**Chapter Twelve**_

_**The Den of the Snake**_

* * *

"Who would like to go first?"

Harry's teeth grinded together. It wasn't the pain from his burns that set his jaw so. Nor was it Madam Pomfrey, whose fussing and harrumphing made Harry feel as though she blamed him personally for getting burned in the first place.

No. It was the sight of Severus Snape couched behind the desk of the greatest wizard Harry had ever known, peering at Harry over steepled fingers with a smug, irritated look that made Harry's fingers flex involuntarily into fists.

The entire headmaster's office had been transformed. The myriad esoteric devices and magical, mysterious objects that Dumbledore had spent a lifetime collecting were gone. In their place sat the trappings from Snape's office, the bottled, pickled menagerie of snakes and gnarled rodents, murky beakers stoppered and sealed with wax, and cauldrons of every shape and substance imaginable. The grotesqueries of the dungeon had escaped and, like their owner, taken a place they didn't deserve. Just the sight of them in that office made Harry's stomach churn.

He focused instead on Ginny and Dresden. They, like he, had been dragged into Snape's office straight from the Great Hall by Snape's pack of Aurors to wait until the headmaster deigned to interrogate them. Their newest teacher had spent the time in a thoughtful and uncharacteristic silence, his eyes resting heavily on the floor. Ginny had tried to do likewise, but her hands had twined together, twiddling nervously, and her eyes kept darting to Harry's face when she thought he wasn't looking. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the effort did little for either of them.

Now that Snape had arrived, fixing them with dark stare, Harry's smile was gone. He folded his arms and stared back, lifting his chin.

Snape leaned over his steepled fingers. "Very well," he said. "Then allow me to begin with the evening's aftermath. We have two Aurors injured or worse. We have a great fissure in our Great Hall, the formation of which very nearly incinerated this school's headmaster. And standing at the center of it all is the illustrious Mister Potter. Why am I not surprised?" His words were languorous and dripped with sarcasm. The tiniest hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"I think you're forgetting about the big honkin' werewolf, chief."

Dresden's words turned every head in the room. He couldn't have gotten a better reaction from Snape if he had slapped the man full in his face. There was the barest hint of a smirk in the corner of Dresden's mouth, which Harry knew full well Snape could not miss.

"You will address me as 'Headmaster,' Professor Dresden," Snape all but growled.

The almost-smirk on Dresden's face became that much closer to real. "Whatever you say, Chief Headmaster. But that wasn't exactly the neighbor's dog that got into your castle," he said. "So why don't we stay focused on the real problem instead of any very superficial accidental renovations that may have occurred."

As Harry watched, Dresden's gaze flickered to Harry's leg, and then up to his face. Their eyes met for a scant instant, and then the professor turned his attention back upon Snape. Whatever traces of mirth Harry had seen in the grizzled wizard was gone.

"Tsh," harrumphed Madam Pomfrey. "The only real worry here is why I've been dragged from a hospital wing full of injured people to take care of one little blister."

She spread a thick paste onto Harry's burn, making little effort to be gentle. Harry bit back a cry as his skin barked at the cold slather. Then he sighed through his nose as the pain dulled into a blissful numbness. The smell of cream and mint wafted up from his leg as the school's stout nurse began wrapping the burn in swathes of gauze.

Snape turned his sour look upon her. "The Aurors have brought their own Healer for security reasons, as you well know. You are to show her every courtesy and leave all Auror concerns to her."

"Oh, naturally, Headmaster," Pomfrey said, her voice dripping sarcasm. "Why, if you like, I can simply give the entire wing to that miserable sawbones and solve the whole dilemma."

As Snape drew a large breath to retort, the doors to the Headmaster's office banged open, and one of the castle's Aurors entered. He was a tall man, older, and pale. The skin over his hollow features was stretched tightly to the point of breaking, and his mouth was drawn like a bowstring. His bald pate glistened with a thin layer of sweat.

Harry saw the wand clutched in the man's whitened fingers and the bandoleer of multicolored glass vials slung across his chest, and it occurred to him that he had never seen another Auror older than this one. Even Mad-Eye Moody hadn't looked so old, and he had been retired. Harry made silent note to keep carefully out of the man's notice.

"Auror Stewart," Snape greeted him, rising from his seat.

"Crosby's dead," the man said matter-of-factly. "Ribcage was crushed entirely. I expect she didn't suffer."

Ginny's face blanched at the news. Harry couldn't blame her. The memory of the Auror falling from Greyback's massive claw came back to him, hearing her last breath rattled wetly as she slid down the wall. It wasn't the first time Harry had seen death. It wasn't even the most horrible death he had ever seen, which was a horrible thought all its own. But the Auror's death—Crosby's death—had been fast and brutal.

And as he remembered it again, it was Ginny's slackened face he saw sliding down the wall instead of the Auror's.

He shut his eyes hard until the thought retreated.

"Dorn is still unconscious, but he'll recover soon enough. Though our Healer is having trouble sorting out one kind of salve from another. If you wouldn't mind, ma'am?" He glanced at Madam Pomfrey.

She shot Snape a scathing look, and said, "It seems my attentions are required elsewhere, Headmaster. If I have your leave, I'll go give the Aurors full run of my stores."

Snape nodded, and Madam Pomfrey left in an icy swirl of robes. Once the doors slammed shut, Snape raised an eyebrow at Stewart, and said, "Well?"

Stewart rummaged in his robe and produced a short, gnarled object, which he tossed onto Snape's desk. It wasn't until Ginny yelped that Harry recognized the object. The skin of Harry's ankle crawled as the severed hand thumped onto the desktop. His hand twitched reflexively toward his robe's pocket.

"This is the only bit of evidence we could find," said Stewart. His puckered expression turned toward Dresden, and he added, "Aside from the architecture, that is."

"Buildings and I have a love-hate relationship," Dresden said without a hint of embarrassment.

Calmly, Snape took up the hand and turned it over. The skin that remained on the hand had become runny in its final moments, and now better resembled ghastly candlewax than anything that belonged to a person. Snape ran his thumb over the blackened stump, and then tested each finger. Then he set it aside and fixed Harry with a look. "And we're to be believed that this is the hand of Fenrir Greyback?"

"You can believe whatever you like. But that was Greyback," Harry said, his voice growing hot at Snape's raised eyebrow.

"It was!" Ginny added. When Snape's dark look fell upon her, she added, "...Headmaster."

Snape stared at them for a long moment of silence. Then he said, "You have each completed your O.W.L.S. Furthermore, I believe you each received exemplary marks for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Thus I am forced to believe that both of you are capable of tracking the phases of the moon."

"Of course we—" Harry began.

"Which is why," Snape continued, raising his voice, "you must certainly understand how ludicrous it would be to claim to have seen a transformed werewolf during a waxing moon."

The heat crept up into Harry's face. His fists balled at his sides as he said, "I know when a werewolf is attacking me. It doesn't matter where the moon is. He transformed."

"And it was Greyback!" Ginny insisted again. "I remember him from last year, when—"

"That is enough," said Snape.

He stood so sharply that his heavy chair screeched against the stone floor. A look of fierce disapproval filled the glare he fixed upon Harry and Ginny, but Harry knew their new headmaster well enough to see the pleased, contemptuous feelings behind the look. Snape had never missed a single opportunity to watch Harry squirm, and now that he ruled Hogwarts, the greasy potion-monger was enjoying the first of what was sure to be many new opportunities.

Without looking away from either of the Gryffindors, Snape handed the arm back to Stewart. "What is your assessment of the matter, Auror?" he said.

As the Auror took the arm, Dresden piped in, "It was a werewolf, by the way. A loup-garou. I don't know how often you let your kids play with werewolves, but I've seen more than a few in my day. Just in case you were interested in the facts."

Stewart sniffed. "Thank you so kindly for your opinions, 'Professor,' " he said. His tone transfigured the word into a bitter insult. "But the real facts of the matter will be determined by us. Normally, we could test the remains for the presence of a lycanthropic curse, but that's impossible—"

"Bull," said Dresden.

"—because," snapped Stewart, glaring at Dresden, "said remains have been roasted in enough fire to wipe any residual magic well and clean away."

Dresden sucked his retort back through his teeth. "That's actually a fair point," he admitted.

"And certainly an expert such as yourself would know all manner of ways by which a man might gussy himself like a werewolf," Stewart said, mock-lecturing. "Animagi, illusions, cursed cloaks, bewitched hair...we've no shortage of plausible explanations that we need to go chasing the fancies of an injured Auror and three panicked civilians."

"Panicked?" Harry protested.

"Civilian?" Dresden protested.

Stewart's gnarled hands wrapped around the stump, twisting anxiously as he scowled at his three star witnesses. He spoke sidelong to Snape, saying, "What's best now is to isolate each of them. A few hours of questions, perhaps a touch of Veritaserum, and we'll have a better notion of these goings-on, Headmaster."

Snape looked ready to voice his agreement when the doors slammed open once more, and Professor McGonagall rushed into the office. The bags under her eyes were twice as heavy as Harry had ever seen them, and her pallor was ghostly. Even so, when she spoke, Harry felt his spine straightening on reflex.

"Headmaster!" huffed McGonagall. "So sorry to be late. I'm afraid our new Aurors have had me running all over the castle trying to find you. Not two of them could give me the same answer. But never mind. Now, if you'd be so kind as bring me up to speed..."

The muscles in Snape's jaw bunched as he made a face Harry had only ever seen the man aim at him. "Professor McGonagall. We were just questioning these two students from your house and your recent addition to our faculty regarding this night's unpleasantness."

McGonagall stiffened. "Professor Dresden was hand-picked by Professor Dumbledore for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts. You must have quite a bit on your mind, Headmaster, as I'm certain I've told you this several times before."

Harry felt his eyebrows rise at that. He knew as well as McGonagall that Dumbledore had never known anything about Dresden. What other falsehoods had she spun for Snape's benefit? Better still, what lies had she told Harry? He decided it was better to listen than ask, and bit down on his tongue.

"Yes," Snape said in an overly patient tone. "And yet, I continue to find myself wondering why our esteemed former Headmaster would choose a replacement for a position that was already so capably filled."

"Perhaps you'll recall, Headmaster," McGonagall retorted politely, placing extra emphasis on his title, "that the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is historically a tenuous one. Even your recent good fortune has led you to leave the post."

Snape's eyes tightened. "My current appointment has nothing to do with fortune, Professor McGonagall," he said in a low, dangerous tone.

Without so much as blinking, McGonagall raised a hand to her breast and said, "Of course. Forgive my slip of the tongue, Headmaster."

Dresden cleared his throat loudly, twice. When neither of the other professors would look at him, he spoke anyway. "Excuse me? Hi. Defense Against the Darkness teacher, right here. Quick question: just how many times do we have to be questioned about this? Because at least three other wizard cops have grilled us already, and I'm getting a little tired of sounding like a broken record."

It was Stewart who replied. "Being that this is an Auror matter, 'Professor,' I believe you'll stay at my leisure, and not leave one second earlier." The old man's face puckered, and his hand clutching the wand grew tighter still.

Dresden's smile grew brittle. Harry saw the man give his gloved hand a tiny shake, and then caught the glinting of the silver charm bracelet settling at the base of Dresden's wrist. Dimly, Harry recalled seeing the bracelet once before, when their professor-to-be had summoned a wall of blue force to break a phalanx of charging brownies. If Dresden fought here like he had in the sporting goods store back then, the Auror would make short work of him.

But then the throbbing pain in Harry's leg made him recall what Dresden had done in the Great Hall. Suddenly he wasn't so certain who would win the fight, but he did know he did not want to be there when it happened.

As if sensing the sudden tension, McGonagall stepped between the men, though she continued to address Snape. "Of course, I'm sure our students and our new professor are eager to cooperate with Auror Stewart. Within reason, of course."

"Reason," Snape echoed.

"Lest we forget, Mister Potter and Miss Granger are students. More than that, they were victims of tonight's attack," McGonagall said. "And considering they and the professor all begin class tomorrow, and that they've already spoken with other Aurors, I'm sure we can content ourselves with taking one more statement from each of them. If Auror Stewart has further questions for them, they can certainly wait until tomorrow."

Snape's brows knitted into one enormous frown.

"We are, after all, here to serve our students' best interests," added McGonagall.

A full minute passed as Snape and McGonagall stared down one another, each trying to be more impassive than the other. The only sound in the room was the soft sputtering coming from Stewart as he tried unsuccessfully to interject on behalf of his interrogation.

Then, blinking slowly, Snape said, "A wise suggestion, Professor. Once we find a stenographer, we may proceed—"

McGonagall's hands emerged from her robes with a golden quill and several sheets of parchment rolled together. Smiling, she offered the items to the sour-faced Auror. "As luck would have it, I happen to have a self-writing quill with me. If you would care to begin, Auror Stewart?" she said.

Stewart took the proffered materials a bit more roughly than necessary, and then proceeded to question Harry, speaking mostly through his teeth as he did. Harry was first, and told exactly the same story he had told the other Aurors. Once he was done, he took small pleasure in watching Stewart interrogate Ginny and Dresden. His eyes kept drifting back to Dumbledore's old desk and the farce sitting behind it. Snape kept staring at him with smoldering, unblinking eyes, and every time Harry looked, he found himself back in that tower watching Dumbledore tumble backwards, disappearing over the edge of the stone wall, the fading green light of Snape's killing curse trailing after him. The memory made his hand twitch, aching to draw the wand in his pocket.

Someone shook him by the shoulder, breaking his reverie. He looked up and saw Ginny's concerned expression. Only then did he realize that the rest of the room was watching him.

"Er, you see, Headmaster?" said McGonagall. "Our students have been through so much today. I really must insist that they be seen to bed."

Snape sniffed. "Very well," he said. "You are excused. You as well, Professor Dresden."

"Not that it hasn't been fun," Dresden said as he followed McGonagall, who ushered out Harry and Ginny, "but between the carlag, the time difference, and the werewolf-related adrenaline, I have a lot of staring at my ceiling wide awake all night to do."

As they reached the doors, Harry half-turned as Snape raised his voice. "And Professor Dresden? Hogwarts is pleased to have you here...for however long you are with us."

Harry couldn't help but smirk at that. Snape had decided to loathe Harry forever before he even met him. Now, it seemed, Dresden had been weighed and measured just as quickly, and found just as wanting as Harry had.

"Appreciate that," Dresden said as he closed the doors behind him. Just before they shut, he added, "Chief Headmaster, sir."

McGonagall led them down the hall. Once they were out of earshot, she whirled on them, and the heavy lines in her face contorted into a scowl. Harry and Ginny stopped so abruptly that Dresden nearly plowed over them both. "Now," McGonagall hissed, you will tell me exactly what happened. All of it, not whatever poppycock you gave the Aurors."

Ginny protested before Harry could even draw a breath. "We didn't lie!" she exclaimed. "Everything happened just the way we said."

"We didn't need to lie," Harry added hotly. "We were the ones attacked. And we're a little tired of being treated like we let Greyback into the castle ourselves."

McGonagall's eyes widened. "Then it really was Greyback?"

"Yes!" Harry snapped, and threw his hands in the air.

Realization dawned across McGonagall's features. She drew back, clutching a hand to her mouth. A string of mumblings emerged from between her fingers, too soft to be intelligible. Harry might have felt a moment of victory if he didn't feel so angry at her for the secrets she refused to share, the secrets she whispered into her hand now.

"Whoever he was, he was definitely a loup-garou," said Dresden. "And whatever Headmaster Skin-Problems says, he's right about the moon. We're weeks away from worrying about the furry contingent, which means there's some hocus pocus going on that I've never seen. I'm going to start poking around, maybe ask some of these 'Aurors' what—"

"No!" McGonagall said. Then, more calmly, she said, "No. I'll bring this to the attention of...other individuals who can address this matter. Discreetly."

Harry scoffed. "Would that be the Order, Professor? The same Order that harbored a traitor for years?"

Glacial anger darkened in McGonagall's face. She drew herself up to her full height, which Harry couldn't help but notice still left her the shortest person present by almost a full head. "I will thank you not to speak of such matters, Potter. I want you and Miss Weasley to focus on your classes." Glancing aside, she added, "And that goes for you as well, Professor Dresden. You will leave this to me."

Harry seethed until he heard Dresden say, "Pass."

Blinking, McGonagall looked at him and said, "Excuse me?"

"Pass," Dresden said. "As in 'I'm going to investigate the werewolf that tried to kill me.' See, I'm a do-it-yourselfer. Plus the asshole broke my staff. I take that kind of thing personally."

Harry folded his arms, grinning as he watched McGonagall's wrath shift from him to the towering American. "Mister Dresden—" she began.

Dresden matched her glare with one of his own. All of the humor left his voice, replaced with an edge that made the hairs on Harry's neck prickle. "'Professor' Dresden," he said.

Unblinkingly, McGonagall echoed darkly, "'Professor.' You are here at my discretion, and at Ebenezer McCoy's request. And if Wizard McCoy were here—"

"Except," Dresden snapped, "Ebenezer isn't here. He duped me into coming to this funhouse version of a school to protect kids like Goggles and Red here."

Ginny frowned, puzzled. "Red?" Then her hand found a lock of her long hair, and she said, "Oh."

"So here I am," Dresden continued, and threw his arms out wide. "And guess what? I have a little problem with authority, especially when that authority gets in my face about protecting people. Thirty seconds ago, it was the low-rent Hans Gruber in that office. Now it's you. So, yeah, I'm going to tell you 'pass,' and then I'm going to goddamn well do what I do because that's...what I do." His voice trailed off as he finished.

As McGonagall sputtered for words, her eyes met Harry's. He smiled smugly, and said, "Don't look at me, Professor. He was Dumbledore's first choice, remember?"

"This matter is not finished," McGonagall warned them.

Dresden simply walked past her, letting his hip push the older woman out of the way. "So finish it somewhere else. I'm putting these kids to bed." Then he paused, and turned long enough to add, "And if you think for one second that Ebenezer McCoy would sit on the sidelines with his thumb up his ass, then you clearly don't know the first thing about him."

Harry's grin widened as he and Ginny fell into step behind Dresden. He didn't dare look back for fear of laughing in the face of McGonagall's rage, which he could feel following them all the way around the first corner. It was well past time someone put McGonagall in her place. Perhaps she thought otherwise, but she was no Dumbledore, and she had no business ordering everybody around as if she were. He could only imagine what state the Order of the Phoenix was in, what with the great wizard gone and his killer's true colors revealed.

After they turned the second corner, Dresden stopped to scratch his head. He looked back at Harry and said, "Full disclosure? I don't actually know where griffon-guys go..."

"Gryffindors," Harry corrected him. "And we're perfectly capable of finding our own way, Professor."

Dresden snorted. "The hell you are. The last time you were alone, Lon Chaney nearly ate you. Consider all of your dates chaperoned from now on."

Quick as could be, Ginny piped up, "It wasn't a date, Professor." She refused to meet Harry's bewildered gaze as she said, "We're just friends."

The towering wizard looked between them, and then drawled, "Right. Well, lead the way, super-friends."

They climbed the stairs to Gryffindor Tower in awkward silence. Harry kept trying to glance sidelong at Ginny, but her eyes were kept firmly locked ahead of them. He couldn't begin to guess why. Had the werewolf attack and their subsequent interrogation by Hogwarts' new police state taken such a toll? A squirming discomfort took hold of his spine as he wondered if he was supposed to hold her hand or say something particularly comforting to her.

When they reached the hidden entrance, the Fat Lady was already dozing in her portrait. Harry cleared his throat loudly, but he still couldn't rouse her. It must have been later in the night than he had thought.

"...are we stopping for an art break?" Dresden asked him.

The question startled the Fat Lady, who awoke with a shout. Dresden cried in alarm and wheeled backwards. His wand was already out, the tip of it glowing. Harry would have laughed if he didn't feel the heat of the glow against his face. The back of his leg began to throb again.

"Oh. I beg your pardon," the Fat Lady said, and brushed at the frills of her ridiculous pink dress. "I was just resting my eyes. Password, please."

Harry groaned. "We don't have the password," he said. "We didn't come up with the others after dinner."

The Fat Lady sniffed. "I can see that, young sir. And I'm far too polite to ask why two students are still out at such an impertinent hour, being marched guiltily back to their beds by an adult. But I cannot simply let anyone in because they ask. Otherwise I'd be wasting my time here, wouldn't I?"

"Imagine that," Harry grumbled under his breath.

Dresden brushed past him to stare the Fat Lady in her widening eyes. "The password is 'open up because I'm a freaking teacher,' " he snapped. His wand was still drawn, although the tip had ceased to glow.

Flustered, the Fat Lady stammered an apology. Her portrait swung aside to reveal the entrance to their common room. Harry started to step over the threshold when Dresden's softened voice made him turn. "Hey, Harry..." Dresden said, fidgeting. "I'm...sorry about the leg."

Harry frowned, puzzled by the wizard's sudden sheepishness. His leg hurt, but Madam Pomfrey's salve had cooled the burn into a minor irritant. And considering how his first day at Hogwarts had gone, Harry doubted it would be the worst he was hurt in the year to come.

He shrugged. "It's not so bad," he said.

Leather creaked loudly as Dresden clenched his left, gloved hand. "Yeah," he said. "Well, get some sleep. And if you remember anything else about the attack, make sure you tell one of the tools in charge."

"I will," Harry lied. His fingers tapped the outside of his robe's pocket.

"But make sure you tell me first," Dresden added through an awkward smile. The man held his ungloved fist out to Harry expectantly. After some hesitation, Harry tapped the upraised knuckles with his own. "Partners. Right?" Dresden asked, letting his fist drop.

"Right," Harry lied again. "Partners."

"Great. Now, where the hell is my room?" Dresden muttered as he started back the other way.

When Harry turned back to the door, Ginny had already stepped inside. The glow of a dying fire spilled across her face, alighting in her hair. She looked back at him as though she had sensed his gaze. Her eyes were cold and unreadable in the warm light as they stared back at him for a long, silent moment. Then, wordlessly, Ginny climbed the shadows of the stairs and disappeared into the girls' dormitory.

Hermione's voice pierced his confusion. "So what did she say?" she asked, half-serious.

The portal swung shut behind Harry. He walked toward the fireplace, spying two silhouettes seated on the same cushion in front of the embers. As his eyes adjusted, the expectant faces of Ron and Hermione grew clear in the empty room. A second cushion was arranged pointedly next to them. Harry plopped down onto it.

"Nothing," he groused.

"Well, what did you say?" she insisted.

"Nothing!" Harry snapped.

Ron groaned and rubbed at his shorn hair. "Hermione, will you just leave it? I think Harry has other things to tell us without you pestering him for details on snogging my sister."

"Oh, don't be thick," she retorted. "Of course Harry's going to tell us about the werewolf. But if I don't press him now, we'll never get it out of him."

Harry knit his brows. "The werewolf is the story," he told her firmly. "We were talking, and somehow Molly...got brought up."

Ron scoffed as Harry began to squirm. "Serves you right. I don't know what you were thinking with that Slytherin girl, but you need to straighten out your priorities."

Ice crept into Hermione's voice as she said offhandedly, "You didn't think his priorities were out of sorts when you first saw her."

"That was before I knew she was a snake!" Ron protested. "She just tricked me with those...and that..."

Even in the dim light, they could both see Hermione's mouth tightening in anger. "It's not like that," Harry said quickly. "And anyway, like I was trying to tell you, we didn't get to talk at all before Greyback—"

Ron rocked forward, nearly unseating Hermione from the cushion they shared. "Then it really was him? And he transformed?"

Harry drew a long breath to gird his patience. Then he told them the events of the night. He left out nothing from the fight, nor the repeated interrogations by Hogwarts' new police, and finally ended with Dresden's rebuttal to McGonagall.

Hermione had her hand over her mouth in shock. "He didn't."

"He did," Harry said. "It was fantastic."

"Did he really put a hole in the Great Hall?" asked Ron. "Someone said it was so big that you can drive a carriage through it."

"Bigger," Harry said. He tugged at his pant leg, showing them both the burn. The angry red of the flesh had already faded to a dull pink. By morning, Madam Pomfrey's efforts would likely heal it in full. "And that's just from being near the edge of the spell. He hit Greyback dead-on with more fire than I've ever seen a wizard conjure. There wasn't anything left but a hand and a hole in the room."

"I suppose you can't blame Snape for being upset," Hermione said. Harry flashed her an angry look, causing her to quickly add, "Or skeptical. I mean, a werewolf between full moons? Is that really possible?"

Harry dug into his robes. "It is," he said. "And I think this has something to do with it."

He produced the large silver bracelet that Greyback had worn. As he handed it over to Hermione, he explained how he had found it at the end of the severed hand wrapped around his ankle after the fight, and how he had slipped it into his robes during the confusion.

Studiously, Hermione ran her fingers over the bracelet. Heat had warped away part of its face, but the rest remained intact. A wolf's profile had been engraved along the outside of the bracelet, with depictions of the phases of the moon spread out around it. Inside, she found the inscriptions that Harry had noticed earlier, written in a language that didn't make any sense to him.

"Greyback used some kind of incantation and touched this bracelet." Harry's eyes screwed shut as he tried to remember the words. "Loopa... Loopy... Luna... Definitely 'luna' in there somewhere, I think."

Her voice fell into a hush. "I've never seen anything like this before, Harry. I've never even read about anything like it before."

Ron's eyebrows rose in alarm. "Really?"

"Yes, really," she said irritably. "I don't know everything, Ron."

"You could have fooled me."

Harry stepped in before their argument could find its legs. "Enough about what I've been doing. What were you two doing all summer?"

Now that they were away from prying eyes, Harry hoped they could tell him loads of good news about all the progress they had made in the hunt for the Horcruxes. But instead, Hermione's expression became hangdog. "We've been looking, Harry. We really have," she began.

His mouth dropped in shock. "Nothing? Not even anything new on the note?"

"Do you have any idea how many 'R-A-Bs' there are out there?" Ron asked. "Or how many wizards with the initials 'R-B' don't put their middle name on anything so it's impossible to sort out?"

Hermione nodded. "And we haven't had access to anything except old copies of the Daily Prophet. And even then, we had to sneak out to the library to read them."

Ron grunted. "Mum and Dad were lunatics about keeping us at home. They're worried we were going to disappear and wind up on the wrong end of some Death Eater's wand."

"They weren't exactly wrong to worry," Hermione scolded him.

Harry gritted his teeth, trying to bite back a string of curses. The war for the wizarding world was well underway, and they had just wasted an entire summer being confined in one hole or another. There was no telling how much damage Voldemort had already done. If the man in charge of Hogwarts was a Death Eater, where else had they seized control.

"Then we're back where we started," Harry said at last.

Hermione exchanged a glance with Ron, who nodded. Drawing a folded piece of paper from her robe, she said, "Maybe not. We did find something else in the Daily Prophet that might be a clue."

Taking the paper, Harry unfurled it in his lap and read it. It was the torn top half of a Daily Prophet, with a headline that read _Hogwarts History Finds Family!_ "What is this?" he asked.

"Seventeen years ago," Hermione began, "a small collection of historical relics turned up at an auction house. Nobody knew where they came from, and since the auctioneers were goblins, nobody ever found out."

"Goblins," Ron said. "Twice the riddle at half the height. Bill says that a goblin—"

Harry's eyes skimmed over the article, and then down to the picture below. He cried out as he spied a disgustingly familiar face in the newsprint, lurking just above the crease. "That's Lucius Malfoy," he said.

Draco's father lurked in the picture next to a display of curios situated on a velvet table. The Death Eater was considerably younger, and much handsomer, belying the atrocities he had already committed in Voldemort's first bid for power.

With a nod, Hermione leaned forward and tapped at the picture. "That's right. According to the article, Malfoy won the most prized lot of the auction."

He followed her finger to the center of the display, where a golden cup sat on a velvet pillow. It looked more a trophy than a cup to Harry, with its two wrought handles. Some complicated picture had been worked onto its front, but the cup was too small in the photograph for Harry to make it out. "A cup?"

"Apparently, there was quite the furious bidding war," Hermione said. "But that's to be expected when something of Helga Hufflepuff's comes to light."

Harry's heart caught in his throat. "The cup!" he said, strangling his own shout halfway through. "The cup," he said again, this time more softly, as he brushed at the paper. Now that he squinted, he imagined that the picture worked into the golden metal was actually that of a badger, the symbol of Helga Hufflepuff's house in that very school.

"Everybody knows the Malfoys have it," Hermione said, "but the funny thing is, no one can recall seeing it. I asked Kingsley Shacklebolt about it at Bill and Fleur's wedding—"

"—which you missed—" Ron said pointedly.

"—and he couldn't recall seeing it," Hermione continued, sparing a moment to glare at Ron. "And he led the Aurors' search of the Malfoy home when Lucius was arrested last year."

Ron's mouth twisted in disgust. "The Aurors didn't leave a single floorboard of that rat's nest unturned, so we figure it isn't there. But, we figure Draco's rotten dad would want to keep it safe, but also want to keep it somewhere he could still get to it without much trouble."

"Mind you, we don't know anything for sure," Hermione added quickly. "We're really just guessing, but..."

"But," said Ron, "where do you suppose a rich old wizard like Lucius Malfoy keeps something important where no other wizard can get to it?"

Harry saw where they were leading him. "Gringotts," he said.

"Exactly," Ron crowed. "Goblins, just like I said."

Furrowing his brow, Harry delved into his memories of being escorted through the cavernous depths of Gringotts Bank. Thick vault doors arranged in a labyrinthine maze struck him as good protection for such a historical artifact, and that was only the foundation for the countless spells and wards the goblins had undoubtedly layered into their prized bank for centuries.

"Getting in is going to be tricky," he said.

Ron gaped at him. "Tricky? No, mate. Getting you out of Hogwarts without that trace going off will be tricky. Getting into Gringotts is going to be one for the bloody history books! No one in the history of everything has ever gotten in there."

Harry scowled and nodded. Looking to Hermione, he said, "Then I guess you'll have to find a way around McGonagall's trace."

She looked reproachfully at him. "Harry, a trace spell is severely complex. I might not be able to just 'find a way around it.' How on Earth did she even—"

"We're going to do it," Harry told his friends. "McGonagall thinks she brought me to some kind of safe house, but she didn't. All she did was bring us back together and give us a headquarters, one with some of the finest magic and the best books in the world.

"We'll figure out a way to retrieve this cup from the Malfoys' coffers," he said, waving the newsprint sharply. "And we'll find 'RAB' on our own, without McGonagall or Professor Dresden. We'll find all the horcruxes."

And when they had done all that, Harry thought to himself, it would be that much easier to give Snape his just rewards. After all, the slimy turncoat had made himself an extremely tempting target when he had stolen Dumbledore's chair, a target Harry didn't intend to miss twice.


	13. A Leaf on the Wind

**Chapter Thirteen**

**A Leaf on the Wind**

* * *

Harry awoke to a throbbing pain in his head. He, Hermione, and Ron had dragged the night well into the early morning brainstorming unsuccessful ideas for breaking into Gringotts. The excitement of the previous day had kept him up even longer staring up at the ceiling, his mind awhirl with everything that had happened. Between Molly's sorting, Greyback's attack, Snape's tyranny, and Ginny's silence, his thoughts had failed to quiet for hours. It felt like he had just closed his eyes when dawn began peeking through his bed's curtains.

When he tried sitting up, his headache spiked. He swore and clutched at his temples, and then swore again at the morning. There was a faint ache in his leg, but when he drew back the sheet, his calf looked like it had suffered a mild sunburn. Madam Pomfrey's stern administrations had put him back together once again.

He pulled back the curtains around his bed. The smiling faces of Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan loomed at his bedside. They said nothing, staring expectantly at him. As Harry stared back, he realized that they were actually holding their breaths. He rolled his eyes and closed the curtains again.

"Oh, come on!" Seamus cried, and tore at the curtains.

Ron sat on his trunk, lacing his trainers. "I warned you," he told the pair in a smug tone.

Dean folded his arms and stuck out his jaw. "You're not here one day and you're already fighting Death Eaters?"

"You've got to at least tell us about it!" insisted Seamus.

Harry looked past them and saw Neville packing books into his bag. As he fumbled for his glasses, he asked, "What? You're not joining in?"

When Harry cleared his eyes, he saw Neville smile sheepishly as he closed the latch of his bag. "If I don't hear it from you, I'll hear it from ten other places," said Neville. "You know the whole school is already talking about what happened last night."

"I heard two other versions already popping down to the common room," Ron chimed in. "One of them said you transformed into a great white stag to protect Ginny. The other one has her transfiguring herself into a cloud of bats that carried the beast off and tore it apart bit by bit."

Neville shook his head. "My gran warned me it would be like this. She said the whole school would be gone to the giants and the beasties without Dumbledore to keep it all straight. I didn't think she'd be right quite so soon..."

"That's exactly why we need the real story, mate!" Seamus insisted. "We never covered werewolves back in Dumbledore's Army. What happens if we're the ones caught next time?"

Ron laughed. "Try to taste terrible," he suggested.

Dean scoffed at him. "Like you know anything about fighting werewolves, Ron."

Standing with his trainers half-laced, Ron whirled on them. Flushed red anger began creeping up his neck. "As a matter of fact—" he began.

Harry held up his hands pleadingly. "All right, all right. Just leave it, and I'll tell you. But you're going to be disappointed."

He gave them a barebones accounting of the previous night's events, leaving out the business between him and Ginny, his odd talk after with Dresden, and the odd magical object he had given to Hermione so she could puzzle out its function. By the time he was finished, though, his friends looked anything but disappointed. Even Neville had gathered close to hear the story.

Dean whistled. "Professor Dresden really took out a werewolf with a single blast of fire?" he asked.

"There was a bit more leading up to it," admitted Harry, "but yes, I suppose."

"I thought he must have been crazy when he walked in last night wearing those things on his boots..." Seamus said.

"They're called 'spars.' Muggles use them to kick horses," Ron explained helpfully, missing the look of horror on Neville's face.

"...but crazy or not, any bloke who can roast a full werewolf in one shot is a welcome sight at Hogwarts nowadays," Seamus continued sagely. "I figure it's been a long while since we had a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher worth anything."

Dean nodded, and said, "Maybe we'll finally start learning something again. I wouldn't mind knowing a spell like that when the next Death Eater shows up."

"No time like today," said Ron. "Our first lesson is this afternoon. After..."

Harry didn't need him to finish. Their first class of the day would be Double Potions with the Slytherins. The lump of anger gathering in his throat took several tries to swallow as he thought of sitting in the same room as Draco Malfoy without drawing his wand. The day had only just begun, and already he felt exhausted.

As he shoved through his friends to get at his trunk, he said, "Do me a favor and tell everyone the real story, will you? I don't fancy having to tell it a dozen more times today."

"Okay," Ron said, "but I'm keeping the part where my sister turns into bats."

But Harry wasn't to escape his classmates' questions so easily. When they got down to the Great Hall, the werewolf attack was the thing on everyone's minds, and they were desperate for a firsthand account. Half of Harry's house piled around him the moment he set foot in the Hall, and followed him all the way to the empty seat where the other half of the house had gathered to listen. A fair number of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had come as well, so many that the aisles between tables had become packed full with students. It took Professor Flitwick's tiny, irritated admonishment to get them to clear out and return to their seats, leaving Harry merely crowded instead of suffocated.

"He's cross this morning because he can't fix the hole," Hermione explained. She shooed a Third Year out of the space next to Harry's and sat down.

Harry glanced at the wall and understood what had gotten everyone so excited. The teachers had pinned two gigantic sheets over the hole Dresden had burned into the wall. Even they were too small to fully curtain it, leaving the part at the bottom in plain view. Harry could see where the heat had melted the stone instead of vaporizing it, making the bottom of the wall look like the stump of an old candle.

"What do you mean, he can't fix it?" Harry asked.

She shrugged. "Just that, really. Something about the spell Professor Dresden used is stymying Professor Flitwick's best repair charms. I heard him muttering about it when I got here."

He frowned. "What kind of spell does that?"

"Fiendfyre," Ron supplied immediately.

Hermione shot him a dirty look. "No teacher would ever use cursed fire at Hogwarts. He wouldn't dare!" Then she blinked, and asked Harry, "Would he?"

Harry spotted Dresden through the crowded Hall. The man sat sagged in his chair at the teachers' table, his hands fixed around a steaming mug. A thin bristle of beard covered his face, and even at a distance Harry could see the bags under his eyes. He must have sensed Harry's look, because as Harry stared, their eyes briefly met, and the wizard offered him a haggard smile.

"I can't say for certain," Harry said to Hermione as he began loading his plate with food, "but Seamus had it right this morning. He's crazy."

"Hey, Goggles!"

The greeting made Harry cringe. He turned around to find Molly standing behind him. She carried a half-empty plate with the silverware wedged underneath the toast. Somehow she must have been able to pack her usual morning cheerfulness into her luggage, because she had an energy about her that Harry decidedly lacked.

More than that, the accouterments of Hogwarts agreed with her. Her student robes did little to dissuade the glances and stares of boys who weren't as subtle as they thought. The lines of her uniform were noticeable enough to make Ron's mouth open and put a tiny crease between Hermione's brows. But the only thing Harry found himself noticing was her green and silver tie, which matched the crest of Slytherin sewn into her robes.

"Hi, Molly..." he said.

Grinning, she flipped the pink half of her hair out of her eyes, and said, "Scuttlebutt around the school is that you have a story to tell. Mind if I sit down? I'll let you watch me eat my blood pudding...which doesn't look like pudding, and I really hope is just a name."

Neville smiled at her and began sliding to one side. But as soon as he did, Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown slid down to fill in the space. They folded their elbows across the table to block every available inch. "Sorry," said Parvati, "but we're full up."

As if on cue, arms began to find their way to the Gryffindors' table, packed elbow to elbow. Harry hadn't realized that the rest of his house had turned to look at the new student. Even the boys' stolen glances became glares as the Slytherin tried to invite herself to their table.

"Plenty of room back at your table," Seamus said, and sniffed.

Wrinkling her nose, Molly said, "Um, okay. I guess I'll see you at class."

They stared at her all the way back to the Slytherins' table. Only once she'd sat down did Hermione turn her eyes sideways. "You can shut it now," she groused. "She's gone."

Ron wiped his mouth and scowled. "What does she think she's doing? Sit down here?" he spat.

"She's new," Neville said quickly, and then winced as Seamus, Ron, and Dean glared at him. "She is! It's not her fault she doesn't know how the houses work yet. And anyway, she knew Harry from before school. Right, Harry?"

Harry started to answer, but Ron interrupted, saying, "Even so, there is no way that Harry is going to play chummy with a Slytherin. Right, Harry?"

Hunching his shoulders, Harry tucked into his breakfast, mumbling some halfhearted agreement around a mouthful of eggs. He felt bad about leaving Molly in the clutches of the other Slytherin students, but Ron was right. She couldn't just sit down with Gryffindors.

He still didn't understand why Molly had been sorted into Slytherin in the first place. It made him question everything they had said and done together over the summer. His cheeks flushed at the memory of his birthday, and he ducked his head even further. His lips tingled with the taste of chocolate chip cookies.

Guiltily, Harry glanced down the table and saw Ginny surrounded by her own crowd. They were talking animatedly around her, probably asking the same kinds of questions that Harry had been deluged with moments ago. The chocolate taste in his mouth turned bitter, and he pushed his plate away. "I'm not all that hungry this morning," he muttered.

Hermione made a halfhearted attempt to fuss over him, but he brushed past her and left the Great Hall. He ducked his head and stalked away from the handful of students who tried to chase him down with more questions about last night. Rushing upstairs, he gathered his books and his cauldron, and left straight for the dungeons.

Anxiety knotted in his stomach at the fear of being stuck with Hogwarts' congenial potions master until class began. But when he arrived, the musty, gloomy classroom was empty. Harry parked his cauldron in the spot next to him to save it for Ron, and then opened up his new copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_. He had left the Half-Blood Prince's copy in the Room of Requirement, and had no intention of going back for it. As far as he was concerned, that book's handwritten notes were as likely to turn him into a Death Eater as teach him anything.

He shivered with disgust at the memory of feeling grateful for the Prince's help, only to discover that they had been Snape's notes all along. Harry wouldn't owe Snape anything, even if that meant failing potions. Then he reminded himself that school didn't matter anyway. All that really mattered was finding the Horcruxes.

Slowly but surely the room filled with students. Gryffindors gathered on their usual side, and Slytherins sat on the opposite side. Molly was one of the last students to arrive. Her cheeks were pink, as if she had been running, but her face beamed with excitement. Harry gave her a half-smile when she spotted him from the doorway. By then, the only seat left was next to Pansy Parkinson, so Molly didn't have the opportunity to repeat her mistake from the Great Hall. As she took her place with the Slytherins, Harry thought he saw her smile dim just a bit.

Professor Slughorn swept into the room, having to turn himself slightly sideways to fit his girth through the dungeon door. "Good morning!" he cried, clapping his hands to settle the room. "And welcome back! I trust all your summers were well-spent? Yes? Excellent!"

A large metal canister swung from his hand. He struggled to lift the canister onto the front table, taking care not to nudge any of the colorful array of beakers.

"This," Slughorn announced with a generous note of pride, "is dragon's breath."

Most of the students sat forward at the mention of the name. Ron's eyes grew huge as he stared at the canister. His hand shot up almost as fast as Hermione's.

"Professor?" asked Hermione. "Isn't dragon's breath, er, extremely..."

"Volatile?" Slughorn supplied grinningly. "Oh, yes indeed, Miss Granger. In a condensed state such as this, and at this volume, a dragon's natural breath could very well force us to redraw our maps of Hogwarts, as it were."

Ron tried raising his hand again, but Dean Thomas was quicker. "Could it do what Professor Dresden did to the Great Hall last night?"

Some of the showmanship trickled out of Slughorn's grin. "Yes," he admitted in a cautious tone. "But, rather than wield such dangerous potential from a wand, we'll be harnessing its power by refining it into Liquid Fire."

A snort erupted from Pansy Parkinson's flaring nostrils. She crossed her arms and scoffed, "Why would we need a potion to make fire? We have our wands for that?"

There was a chorus of murmured agreements from across the room. But Slughorn just smiled. He plucked a glass tube filled with red liquid from its rack on the table. Pinching it between his sausage-like fingers, he displayed it to the class, and said, "You are certainly welcome to use your wands if you like. Summon up a campfire to chase away the nip of the night's cold. But this?"

He tilted the tube carefully, keeping his hand well away from its mouth. At his coaxing, a single drop dribbled from the glass.

Slytherin and Gryffindor alike jumped in their seats at what sounded like the crack of a gunshot. Harry's eyes trailed to the floor at Slughorn's feet, where he saw the flagstones begin to glow. The stone where the drop had landed was cracked in half. A pinhole in the middle of the stone continued to sizzle and smoke as the drop ate its way down to the castle foundation.

"This is Liquid Fire," Slughorn said smugly, and replaced the tube in its rack. "No flame, no smoke, but it burns hotter and faster than nearly anything any wizard can conjure. It can even burn through magic itself, should the need arise."

Tired of holding his hand up without reply, Ron blurted, "My brother Bill uses Liquid Fire all the time to burn through cursed locks and doors for Gringotts."

Slughorn nodded. "Yes, dealing with cursed objects is one of its many uses. Liquid Fire is quite useful in pinpoint demolition or excavation as well. But it is dangerous," he cautioned them, holding up his finger. "When you find the recipe in your texts, you'll notice a charm on the next page. You'll need to prepare your cauldrons and your beakers with this charm to make them resistant to the brew. If you forget, Madam Pomfrey might be growing a new set of hands for you."

Pages rustled as the students opened their textbooks to the proper page. Beakers clinked and cutlery rattled as they began to gather the necessary ingredients from the cabinet. Harry had just collected the perdition peppers, leery of the soft orange glow the vegetable emitted, when he heard a familiar voice say, "Um, Professor?"

Slughorn looked up from his beakers. "Ah, Miss Carpenter! You had a question about the recipe?"

Molly lowered her hand. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth as she frowned at her book. "Yeah," she drawled. "I have no idea what any of this is telling me to do. It makes no sense."

It was Slughorn's turn to frown. He stood opposite Molly and checked her book, likely to make sure she had opened it to the right page. "Er, what don't you understand, exactly?" he asked. "I was told you had received previous education in potion-making."

"Yeah," Molly drawled again, "but it was nothing like this."

His frown deepening, Slughorn said, "Well, how did you learn to brew potions, if I might ask?"

By now the entire classroom had stopped to watch Molly. Her cheeks turned pink, but she kept her voice steady and clear as she said, "The way I was taught, a potion has eight parts: something to engage each of the five senses, as well as something that keys off of a wizard's mind and her spirit, all mixed into a liquid base. You combine the ingredients, and then..."

Slughorn's frown had softened into genuine interest. "Yes? And then?" he prompted her.

She waved her hand over her empty cauldron, waggling her fingers. "You infuse it with your magic, letting it cook until it's done. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. And I've never heard of most of these ingredients. Perdition peppers? Wintersbane? It's all Greek to me."

"And what would you use?" Slughorn asked. He seemed genuinely pleased, as if he knew something Molly didn't.

"Um..." Molly tapped her finger to her chin. "Cayenne pepper, and a spark struck from flint...the smell of a freshly chopped habanero...the sound of a crackling fire...hot sauce for the base, definitely..."

Sniggering began to rise from both sides of the room. But Slughorn held up his hands, and said, "Now, now, Miss Carpenter is exactly correct. She's been taught a different kind of potion-making, a style used chiefly by bush casters."

The sniggering grew into full giggles. Harry scowled, looking around at the grins hidden behind hands. Even Ron looked like he was struggling to keep his face straight. Harry didn't get the joke, and he didn't particularly appreciate it either.

"What's a bush caster?" Molly asked for the both of them.

Slughorn's smile grew tight-lipped. "It's a rather rustic colloquialism, I'm afraid. It refers to a witch or wizard who lives outside of proper civilization, and thus has little or no access to magical ingredients."

When the giggling persisted, Molly's cheeks flushed fully red. "So I'm the wizard equivalent of the rednecks from Deliverance. Great," she said flatly.

"Not at all," Slughorn said. "Bush brewing takes a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge. The actual brewing takes longer, but the results, if properly made, may be just as potent. I knew how to do it when I was much younger, but I'm afraid I haven't attempted it in many, many years."

"That's because it's easier to pop down to a store and buy real ingredients," Crabbe muttered loud enough to be heard. He and Goyle grunted with laughter.

As Molly's face grew redder still, Slughorn reached across the table to close her book. "I'll tell you what, Miss Carpenter. Do you think your potion might be ready by tomorrow if you prepared it with your own methods?"

Molly considered the question, and then nodded reluctantly.

Slughorn clapped his hands. "Excellent! Write down any ingredients you might need on a piece of parchment and place it outside the classroom door. You should have the items within a few minutes. If you can brew a Liquid Fire as potent as my own, I'll award thirty points to Slytherin."

"...is that good?" she asked, and received another chorus of laughter from the class.

At Slughorn's admonishments, the students settled into their work. One by one, when the remainder of their ingredients had been prepared, they went to Slughorn's desk with their cauldron to receive the volatile base of the potion, the dragon's breath. The silvery liquid was covered in a thin layer of mist that billowed whenever the cauldron moved. It smelled faintly of charcoal and brimstone.

As Harry walked back to his table, he saw Molly begin to assemble her own potion without any of the normal ingredients. She had spent the first few moments of class waiting quietly in her chair while the other students worked, having placed her piece of parchment in the hallway. Then, as the first student—Hermione, naturally—was collecting her dragon's breath, a soft knock sounded at the door. Molly answered it to find her collection of oddities waiting in a neat pile at the foot of the door.

He continued to watch her from the corner of his eye throughout the class. She stopped frequently in her preparations to scribble unintelligible notes on a spare piece of parchment. Her lips moved silently as she handled each of the ingredients: a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, a glowing ember that had been wrapped in heavy cloth, and a matchbook, all mixed into the bottle of hot sauce she had poured into her cauldron. She broke an ordinary orange pepper and wafted the halves over the top of it all. Then she struck a flint over the cauldron's mouth to create a spray of sparks, lit a rolled-up bit of parchment and held the crackling end above the cauldron. Finally, after a moment's consideration, she dropped the flint into it, and then set her cauldron over the heat until it reached bubbling.

Harry had never seen anything quite like it. Potion-making had always involved a wide host of exotic ingredients. He couldn't imagine the junk Molly was throwing into her cauldron would do anything but stink.

The puzzle of her brew distracted him so much that Ron had to seize his hands before he attempted to pour his potion into a glass beaker he had neglected to charm. None of them were able to catch Seamus in time, who was forced to scramble back from his chair as his beaker vanished beneath a wave of spilled, mostly-finished Liquid Fire. Dean was barely able to save his cauldron from tumbling to the floor as their table was eaten half away, collapsing loudly to one side.

By the time the rest of the students had stoppered their beakers or given up, Molly was still at it. She stared intently into the bubbling red surface of her brew. Nothing and nobody could distract her, even when some of her fellow Slytherins threw a few mocking japes at her.

As Harry went to place his work on Slughorn's desk, he saw a pale face remaining on the Slytherin side of the room. The other students were turning in their work and leaving. But Draco Malfoy just sat there, staring at an empty cauldron.

Harry felt a stab of surprise in his stomach. He had expected Malfoy to be at the center of his usual collection of Slytherin cronies, tossing insults across the classroom when the professor's back was turned. But he hadn't even gotten up to get the ingredients for the day's potion. Malfoy had been so quiet and so still that Harry had actually forgotten about him.

And that realization sent a fresh wave of anger rising up Harry's throat. He didn't want to forget about Malfoy. It didn't matter how gaunt Malfoy became, or how miserable he looked. Malfoy had made his choice that night in the tower, and he would answer for it.

As if sensing his anger, Hermione and Ron ushered him out of the classroom. They had to hurry across the castle to reach their next class in time.

The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom had changed appearance and location so often that none of them knew what to expect anymore. Lockhart's decadence, Lupin's comfortable clutter, Umbridge's oppressive pink totalitarianism, had created a menagerie of extremes that led Harry to expect anything he could imagine.

He was almost disappointed by the shape of the room now. Half of the space was taken up by a series of long tables with chairs facing a desk and chalkboard at the front. The back half of the room was wide and empty, the floor padded with a woven mat that gave beneath their shoes. Several faceless target dummies stood in the corner with bull's-eyes painted on their heads and chests. There was a bin full of blue rubber balls, and another filled with pinwheels, and still another that overflowed with dirt. In the far corner, there was a cushion, where Mouse had lain to watch people entering the room. Harry detoured Ron and Hermione to meet the great dog, whose tail thumped loudly against the wall as they each petted him in turn.

"I'd wager he would give Fang a run for his money," Ron said, laughing as he buried his hands in Mouse's shaggy coat.

Dresden sat behind his desk with his nose buried in their textbook, _The Way of the Wizard_. He seemed to be avoiding any student's gaze as they entered the classroom. Harry wondered for a moment if he should at least say hello out of consideration for their summer spent together, albeit unwillingly. But he decided that he didn't want to be singled out as possibly the teacher's pet, especially when the teacher had not given two damns about him for months. So he, Ron, and Hermione took a seat at the middle table.

The desk seemed to be where Dresden had kept the more personal of his possessions: an old wind-up alarm clock featuring Mickey Mouse, and a plastic figurine of some bloke with shiny black armor and a red sword that Harry almost recognized, and a paper crown that read _Burger King_ on the front. Perhaps oddest of all, there was a sizeable collection of paperback novels at the desk's edge. Their covers were cracked with use, and made with garish purples and pinks, with words like "love" and "passion" and temptation" in their titles. The novels were kept in place with a gruesome bookend, a bleached white human skull. It was turned so the empty eye sockets stared out at the class.

After several minutes of murmured chatter, the students fell silent, realizing that class had already started. Dresden still hadn't said anything or looked up from his book. The Gryffindors looked to one another with helpless shrugs, unsure of what to do.

After another moment, Hermione raised her hand. "Erm, excuse me, Professor?"

Dresden jolted as if he had been struck by lightning, slamming the book down on the desk with a loud _clap_. "Huh?" he cried, and then, "Yes. Right! Class. Class is in session."

He stood up from his chair so violently that it tipped over. He fumbled, trying to catch it, and then trying to right it once it had struck the floor, until finally he gave up and left it where it lay. Moving to the chalkboard, he wrote "Profesor Dresden" in large, misshapen block lettering.

"Right," he said. "I'm—"

He went back and added the missing "s."

"Right. I'm Professor Dresden. Professor Harry Dresden," he said. Folding his arms, he added, "Mister Professor Harry Dresden. Not 'Doctor.' Mister. Not-Doctor Mister Professor Harry Dresden. Sir."

He fiddled with his hands for a moment. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on his brow.

"Right," he said. "So, this is Defense Against the Darkness. Normally I'd just recommend a night light, but we have a whole class to fill, so..." When his grin was met with uncomfortable silence, he sobered, and said, "That was a joke. Do people laugh here, or do their upper lips just get less stiff?"

Harry couldn't help but think of what the real joke in the classroom was.

Sighing, Dresden rubbed his face. He kept a hand over his stubbly mouth, sizing up his students. There seemed to be a silent debate going on behind his eyes. Finally, he dropped his hands, and said, "Okay, look. I'm just going to level with you: I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here."

The class remained silent in the wake of his understatement. Slowly but inevitably, Hermione raised her hand. "You're supposed to prepare us for our N.E.W.T. exams, aren't you, Mister Professor...sir?"

He shook his head. "Right, except I'm still a little unclear about what those are, or why they're important."

Some of the students were giving each other uneasy looks. How could the man who had dispatched Fenrir Greyback with a single spell be so useless? Was he playing a game? Harry knew that Defense Against the Dark Arts was the one class that could actually teach them something important for the battles to come, and McGonagall had saddled them with the world's most unqualified teacher.

"N.E.W.T.," Neville said, looking uncertain. "Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test. It's...well, it's the test the Ministry will give us at the end of the year to gauge how far along we've come. Sir. Professor-Mister."

Dresden rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "Standardized magic testing. Hells-freaking-bells."

"Didn't you have to take the N.E.W.T.s, or anything like them, Professor...Sir-Mister?" asked Lavender Brown.

He shook his head. "No," Dresden said absently. "I was homeschooled."

That set the class to murmuring.

Dresden looked up sharply as if realizing his own words. "Hey! It's not what you think. Knock it off!"

As silence settled again, Hermione raised her hand once more. "Well, perhaps you could just teach us from the assigned text...Sir-Mister-Professor."

"Stop calling me that," Dresden said, continuing to massage his eyes. When his apparent headache had diminished to the point where he could see again, he took up the textbook from his desk and flipped to a random page. "And also, this book is gibberish. It's nothing but wand-motion diagrams and spell entries. Hell, the Latin in here is worse than mine, and that's saying something."

Seamus blurted, "Well, what did you expect? That's what a textbook is."

Dresden's gaze flicked up from the book to stare at Seamus from under a heavy brow. "I'm sorry. What was that, Eyebrows?"

Red embarrassment flooded Seamus's cheeks. The heat from his failed Liquid Fire had turned his eyebrows into blackened stubble. "The book has loads and loads of spells we're supposed to know, and it shows us what to do and what to say. That's what magic is."

The room delved into an absolute stillness as Dresden just stared dumbfounded at the class. His eyes flickered from face to face as though he were looking for something in particular.

It had gotten so quiet that everyone, even Harry, jumped at the sound of Dresden sharply closing his book. He tossed the text back onto his desk and then brushed his hands, as if distaining the very touch of it. "Okay. That's a good place to start. Somebody tell me what magic is."

They stared at him, confused.

Beckoning with both hands, Dresden said, "Come on, come on. You've been going to Mage Academy for, what, ten years? This should be baby-town frolics for you. What is magic?"

Only Hermione's hand rose. "Magic," she said at Dresden's nod, "is a supernatural form of energy capable of exerting influence on the natural world. Humans gifted with the ability to control that energy are called witches and wizards."

Her answer sounded distantly familiar to Harry. It wouldn't surprise him if the words came from the first chapter in _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1_. Dresden smiled at them, and said, "Where I come from, 'witch' is kind of a pejorative."

Hermione straightened in her seat. "It's what I am," she said with a slight huff.

"And she's a right good witch too!" Ron added hotly.

Dresden raised his hands, grinning. "Whatever you say, Glinda. Take, uh, ten points for Griffon-Gate."

"Hermione," she muttered, blushing.

"Gryffindor," Harry said.

"Gesundheit," Dresden said to them both. "And anyway, you're almost right."

She huffed louder than when Dresden had gotten her name wrong. "Almost?" she demanded.

"Magic isn't just energy, and it doesn't just belong to wizards...and witches," he said. Gesturing all around them, he said, "Magic is life, and it's everywhere. Magic links together every single living thing on the planet and beyond. It's behind every feeling you have, and every connection you make with other people, places, and even abstract concepts."

Harry blinked. If he hadn't seen Dresden speaking, he might have thought that the words came from Dumbledore's mouth. The old wizard had often told him that magic was something more than wands and books. As he had learned more about his parents' past, Harry had come to known how much magic was in seemingly simple concepts like love. Love was the only reason he was still alive.

In a grizzled, wise voice, Dresden added, "It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."

As the classroom answered with blank confusion, Harry admitted that the American might have sounded a little like Dumbledore, just for a moment, but he was still a far cry from the venerable headmaster.

Dresden groaned. "Hells bells, Alec Guinness was British! He was a knight! What have they been teaching you here?"

He circled around the desk and began to draw a five-pointed star that filled half of the chalkboard. Then he closed it inside a shaky circle, and then began to draw a series of numbers and smaller shapes next to it.

"I was going to lay this on the new kids," Dresden said as he continued to write, "but it looks like I'm going to have to catch up everybody before I can teach you anything about defense."

Slowly, Harry drawled, "Then what are you going to teach us?"

The rest of the board disappeared in short order. When he was done with his collage of symbols and numbers, Dresden stepped aside to present it to the class. "I'm going to teach you magic," he said.

For nearly twenty minutes, Dresden proceeded to lecture the class on concepts no other teacher had ever broached. Harry was skeptical at first, but in short order he found himself scribbling furiously to write the diagrams on his parchment before Dresden could erase them to draw something new. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ron struggling to copy the shapes with an unsteady quill. At his other side Hermione was already reaching for another roll of parchment, having filled hers in with nearly every word Dresden said.

He talked of mental constructs, and the flow of magic into and out of the body. He told them of the five key elements and how a wizard's will can bind them to a task. Magic had limits, but those limits could be pushed just as human limits could: with practice, concentration, and effort.

Finally, Dresden rubbed at his throat. Dry-throated, he said, "All right. That's enough talking for one day. I think it's time for some action."

A muffled cheer rolled across the classroom as everyone put away their quills. Dresden rummaged under his desk a moment before coming up with a small plastic shopping bag. A pair of leaves fluttered from the edge of the bag. They spiraled to the floor, dry and cracking and colored like fall.

Harry had just drawn his wand when he heard Dresden clear his throat and say, "Nope. No wands."

"Are you joking?" Seamus demanded.

Dresden smirked. "I can't tell if you're surprised or not," he said to the blank-browed Seamus. "But yes, I'm serious. No wands. In fact, I don't want to see a wand in my class unless I tell you otherwise."

Harry joined in the universal grumbling. They had all been in this same situation before, when Dolores Umbridge had terrorized the school. "So, no magic, then," he groused.

A dark brow arched on Dresden's forehead. "Oh, you'll be doing magic."

"With no wand?" said Parvati said. "Is that even possible?"

"We'll find out," said Dresden. Student by student, he walked down the table and gave them a dried leaf from his bag. Once everyone had a leaf sitting on the tabletop in front of them, he said, "Wind is usually the easiest of the five elements to summon for beginners. So today, all I want you to do is try to summon a little puff of air to move the leaf."

Dean Thomas made a face that looked like the rest of them felt. "That's all? We're blowing a leaf off a table?"

Dresden shrugged. "You gotta crawl before you can walk, Super Star. But I promise that if you can manage this, we'll move on to more advanced magic _tout de suite_."

"But..." Poor Hermione looked lost. She kept looking at the notes beneath the leaf, and then back up at Dresden, over and over again as if she would read something that made his lesson make sense. "But what spell do we use? What's the incantation? We at least need to know the words, don't we?"

Smirking, Dresden said, "Words can definitely be part of your mental construct. But they're much more effective if you choose the words yourself." He must have seen the redness creeping up Hermione's neck, because he balked, and added, "But, since I'm already pushing you outside your comfort zone, why don't we try an incantation like...Ventas Minimus?"

"Ventas Minimus?" Ron echoed, frowning.

Dresden nodded. Then, standing halfway across the room, he threw out his right hand and boomed, "_Ventas Minimus_!"

Ron's leaf, and only Ron's leaf, was caught in a tiny gust of wind. It whirled up and smacked into his cheek, sticking with the sweat he had worked up trying to write down Dresden's lecture. Harry's leaf hadn't even stirred.

As he lowered his hand, Dresden was all smiles. "Well?" he asked. "I see a bunch of stuck leaves right now. Let's get to work."

The whole class began chanting Dresden's Latin-ish words. Flexing his hand, Harry stared at the leaf, and began to arrange his thoughts as Dresden had told them to do. He licked his lips, and focused his will until nothing remained but him and the leaf. Something tingled beneath the skin of his palm. Harry reached out, blocking out the leaf with his hand, and murmured, "Ventas Minimus."

Nothing happened. When he pulled his hand aside, Harry saw his leaf still sitting on the tabletop. As he twisted his lips at the little leaf, he heard a chorus of people around him attempting the same thing, all with the same result.

Harry tried again. And again. He tried for nearly ten minutes without ever making the leaf so much as twitch. Judging by the notes of frustration he heard from the other students, he knew everyone else was feeling the same way. Neither Hermione or Ron had made any progress. The couple of students who did exclaim were questioned by Dresden and asked for a repeat performance, only to be told that the force of their shouted incantations had jiggled their leaves.

The headache Harry had felt when he had awoken began to return. He rubbed at his temples and pushed back from the table. His eyes closed at the pain, banishing the sight of the stubborn leaf.

As he let his mind drift away from the complex equations Dresden had made them copy, he began to think about magic done like this. It was hard to remember a time when he hadn't relied on his wand, not because it had been so long ago, but because he had no love for those years of his life.

There was one memory, almost forgotten, that he thought of fondly. That trip to the zoo for Dudley's birthday. It had been shortly before Harry's eleventh birthday, before Hagrid had appeared and changed his life forever. His headache lessened as he remembered hearing the snake behind the glass and, without meaning to, honestly, letting it loose to terrorize his fat cousin.

He couldn't help but smile. He had made an entire pane of glass vanish without even meaning to as a child, and now here he was, trying desperately to make a puff of air.

That day at the zoo had almost been a happy one. He remembered when they had first arrived, and Dudley and his friend...Pears? Piers. Dudley and Piers had clamored for ice cream, and so Petunia had taken them to get some. Harry, naturally, was not included in this venture, and was told so even though he hadn't asked.

Under Vernon's watchful glower, Harry waited quietly for the other boys to get their treat next to a large enclosure with tall iron fences. Inside the fence was nearly an acre of grass with a few rocks and trees, and half a dozen antelope milling about in the shade.

Harry had stared at them, marveling at the sleek creatures. Every few minutes an antelope would bound about, either chasing another or simply running out of boredom. He watched the way they loped, pushing into great strides as if gravity only had half a hold on them.

The sign next to the enclosure said that an antelope could leap up to four meters high on a good day. That explained why they needed such a tall fence with the top curved inward. Harry kept watching the antelope with his face pressed to the bars, hoping he would see one of them take a great leap. For one tiny moment, he allowed himself to imagine what it might be like if he could leap out of Vernon's reach and bound away.

"Harry," Ron hissed.

Harry opened his eyes and saw Ron looking at him with worry. Several seats down, Dresden stood coaching Neville with his mental constructs. The tall wizard was sending furtive glances Harry's way.

Shaking his head, Harry began aligning his mental constructs again. But they were worse than ever. His focus kept slipping back into that memory of watching the antelope. He remembered the feeling of the cold iron on his face, and the sound of the creatures' hooves thumping against the grass, and the whisper of a breeze against the back of his neck. He felt the same wistfulness now as he did then, wishing that he could do something even though he knew he couldn't.

"_Ventas Minimus,_" Harry murmured distractedly.

His leaf jetted forward off the table. It spun in the air, taking a twisted path back to the floor that turned it into a tiny orange blur. Harry felt his pulse race with excitement as he realized what he had done.

And then two lances of bright pain spiked into his temples. His vision went black as he doubled over, crying out and clutching his head.

A large hand fell upon his shoulder to steady him. "Easy. Easy!" Dresden said. "You're okay."

Harry felt anything but okay. Eventually, though, the pain began to subside, and he could see again. When he opened his eyes, he found the entire class staring at him with a mixture of shock and concern. Though it still felt like someone had inflated a balloon inside of his skull, Harry still would have preferred having the full agony back if it meant he wasn't once again the center of attention.

Dresden stepped back to address him, raising his voice so everyone could hear. "Looks to me like somebody just did some wandless magic. Care to share with the class how you pulled it off, Goggles?"

Two or three people snickered at the nickname, making Harry wince. "Not really."

"It's important," Dresden coaxed him. Adding a sharp look at the students who snickered, he added, "Maybe some of these other slackers would benefit from your new expertise. How did it feel when you made the spell work? What did you do that time that worked for you?"

Harry sighed, wishing that everyone would just leave him alone until his head stopped throbbing. "I dunno," he said. "I just...remembered wind, I guess."

The answer felt pathetic, but Dresden snapped his fingers and pointed. "Perfect! Ha! Everybody hear that? Try remembering wind as you cast the spell."

"And then my head split open," Harry added, rubbing his forehead with his palms.

Dresden nodded. "I thought it might. That's called backlash," he told the class, "although it can go by half a dozen different names. It's the excess or misplaced energy of a spell rebounding on the caster when your magic and your mental construct don't quite mesh. Don't be afraid of it, though. With the power you're summoning, the worst it can give you is a little migraine."

Though Harry's head throbbed in disagreement, the rest of the class resumed their casting in earnest. But by the third or fourth attempts, their incanting grew listless. Harry was grateful that Dresden didn't place another leaf in front of him. Perhaps backlash was a little more serious than their new teacher let on.

After a half-dozen tries, Ron dropped his hand in disgust. "Come on, mate," he whispered to Harry. "Tell us the real secret. What did you do?"

"Just what I said," Harry whispered back.

"Come off it," Ron said. "What was it? Did you nick your wand out of your pack and cast under the desk?"

Harry's brows knit together. "I didn't cheat," he hissed.

"Leave him be, Ron," Hermione said primly. Her hand hovered at a precise distance from her leaf, never varying from attempt to attempt. "It's just as Professor Dresden said. You only have to channel magic in the proper way. It takes focus."

He leaned across Harry to sneer at Hermione. "Is that right? 'Cause I noticed your leaf hasn't decided to go anywhere on its own yet."

Hermione's whole face puckered. She leaned close, pressing her scowl into Ron's. "Perhaps I'm distracted by all that whinging I hear."

"Just admit that the great Hermione Granger has finally—"

"Hey!" Harry pleaded in a whisper. By this point Hermione and Ron were both practically sitting in his lap. "Would one of you like to trade seats with me?"

They straightened in their seats, both red-faced and cold-shouldered. With a derisive snort, Ron stuck out his hand. "_Ventas Minimus_," he sneered.

Harry nearly toppled from his seat as the table he shared with Ron blew forward at a torrent of wind. His hair whipped in every direction, making it difficult to watch as their books and quills spilled across the classroom floor. The table slammed down on its edge with a thunderclap that scared the whole class onto their feet.

Swearing violently, Ron doubled over and grasped his head. He kept swearing, and his knuckles grew white as he twisted his fingers into his hair. It wasn't until Hermione reached over with a tentative hand that he grew still.

"...wow," said Dresden. "That was, um, really dramatic. Do you feel up to sharing?"

When Ron lifted his head, he had a ribbon of blood streaming down one nostril. His eyes swam for a moment, and then he slurred, "I was getting angry, and then I started thinking about...someone's breath," he said. It was hard to see him blush with his face already red, but it wasn't impossible.

Dresden nodded. "Good. Anger can be a powerful source of magic," he told the class, "but you have to be careful when you use it. Anger is a fuel, nothing more. You never let gasoline take the wheel for you, and you never let anger direct your spells."

"If this is what anger gets you, then from now on I'm drinking a butterbeer before every spell," Ron bleated. He pressed the heel of his hand to one eye, squinching the other in pain.

Chuckling, Dresden said, "Nice job, Ginger. You get an A-plus, or full marks, or a smiley face sticker, or whatever it is I'm supposed to give you. Now, who's next?"

For the remainder of the class, the Gryffindors redoubled their efforts. Ron's explosive success had kindled a new excitement in them, or so it seemed to Harry. He watched as more of his friends managed to summon a tiny gust of wind, sometimes in pairs, but more often alone. Never in his history of Hogwarts had Seventh Years been so excited about moving a tiny leaf.

Each time someone managed it, Dresden would stop the class and ask the student to explain how they did it. Lavender Brown described through clenched teeth how she had thought of a spritz from her favorite perfume bottle. Dean described, when his voice worked again, how he had channeled the feeling he got when he rode his broom in a Quidditch match. Seamus said he thought about how that hot blast of air that warned him when one of his spells was about to go wrong. Every one of them received the same backlash headache that Harry had gotten, although no one else's nose bled, and nothing worse happened.

By the time class ended, there were more headaches than leaves left on the tables. "Nice work, guys," Dresden said. "Um...right! For homework, bone up on what we talked about today: mental constructs and magical flow. We're going to jump right back into it next class."

They filtered out of the classroom with a collective groan. Harry's headache had lessened considerably, which meant that it still pounded. But Ron still had the worst of it. He wobbled into the doorway and the corridor walls. It was only Hermione's arm linked in his that kept him on his feet.

"That was absolutely fascinating!" Hermione beamed. "I can't wait to get to the library and start researching these new techniques! Of course, I've heard of wizards that could use magic without their wand, but it's another thing entirely to attempt it yourself."

"Only you could want more of that," Ron groaned. "Give me a wand any day." Harry thought it showed immense personal growth on Ron's part that he didn't say anything more. Hermione's leaf hadn't budged the entire class.

Pulling tighter around his arm, Hermione said, "First I'm going to get you to the Hospital Wing."

"Don't go sounding like my mum," Ron groused. But he laid his free hand atop hers.

Aiming a second look of concern toward Harry, Hermione said, "Maybe you should go too..."

Harry shook his head and instantly regretted it. "It's not that bad," he lied. "You two go on. I'm going to go outside for a bit of fresh air."

With some reluctance, Hermione and Ron disappeared down the corridor. Harry decided that going outside might do him some good after all, and so wandered down and slipped out the front doors of the school.

The sunny day made his headache do cartwheels. So he kept his eyes trained downward and began to walk the grounds. Soon enough his feet led him on the familiar path around the lake. He walked for a bit until the pressure behind his eyes became manageable again, and then found a pleasant bit of shade under a tree by the lake's edge.

Hogwarts loomed in the near distance. From here, he could see the whole of the castle. It wasn't hard to spot the dark robes of Aurors marching around the castle perimeter in pairs, or blinking past corridor windows, or standing watch by the front gate.

His return to Hogwarts had been fraught with dangerous and unpleasant surprises, and more than a little pain on top of that. Harry wondered if he wasn't due for something to go right for a change.

As his eyes lowered, he saw a naked woman at the lake's edge.

Harry sat bolt upright, gasping in surprise at the sight of the woman. She had skin like pure, polished ivory, so pale that it was a wonder he couldn't see right through her. She was turned away him, and Harry could see taut muscles rippling all down her back as she bent and drew a handful of water up over her arm. Thick locks of hair swung down to brush the earth behind her. Each lock was dyed a different shade of blue, so that when it moved it looked like a cascading waterfall.

She drew another handful of water up to her chest. Then, as if sensing him, she turned where she sat, cupping an arm over her perfect breasts. She was all tight lines and delicious curves. Her lips were the color of frozen blueberries, and they curved into a playful smile.

Harry felt lost in her eyes. Her face was smooth and youthful, but her eyes were old, and they were the most vibrant shade of blue he had ever seen. Harry felt his blood run hot and his mouth run dry as she winked at him and then turned back to resume bathing.

Craning his whole body, Harry looked back around the tree, half-expecting someone else to come running or exclaim. There should have been some commotion for a naked woman in the lake. But he didn't see anyone near enough to notice. So he turned back, and nearly shouted himself when he found the spot where she had been empty. There were no tracks, not even bent grass or ripples in the water, to indicate she had ever been there.

Harry rubbed at his eyes, half-expecting her to reappear when he looked again. Nor did she appear after he waited and watched for nearly an hour after.

As he sat beneath the tree, watching, he wondered if going crazy and imagining a beautiful woman bathing in front of him could be considered something going right for him or not.


	14. House Rivals

_**Chapter Fourteen**_

_**House Rivals**_

* * *

For the next two days, Harry returned to the lakeside every chance he got, but he never saw the pale woman return to the lakeside. He never told anyone else about the strange sight for fear that they would think he'd gone mad. Even Harry had to admit that the story wouldn't make sense if he spoke it aloud. But the memory of her unearthly beauty brought him back again and again for the hope of another glimpse. Finally Ron and Hermione threatened to follow him if he tried disappearing on his own again. He grumbled, but acquiesced.

The three of them kept up their nightly conspiring until the Common Room fireplace burned down to embers. But without any new information, the sessions usually deviated into Harry and Ron cajoling Hermione for the answers to their homework. They still didn't know how to break into the impenetrable goblin bank, nor did they find a miraculous index of wizards with the initials RAB.

Molly avoided the Gryffindors' table in the Great Hall after that first encounter. Whispers were already circulating the school about the new girl's abysmal wand-work. American wizards, it seemed, couldn't handle their wands, a fact that even Harry's house found hilarious.

Harry didn't join in their laughter, but he didn't leap to Dresden's or Molly's defense either. The other rumor spreading was that Harry had spent time with their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in the summer, and the rest of the student body debated whether that made Harry a teacher's pet or the first unfortunate casualty of their DADA education.

Some of that sniggering ended, however, right at the start of their next Double Potions. Slughorn invited Molly to the front of the class to demonstrate her brew, producing a cubic meter of solid stone with his wand. A single drop of the bush potion cracked the block in half, and Slughorn levitated it so everyone could see the pinhole that had been burned all the way through it.

Harry heard a few halfhearted claims of cheating, but everyone already knew it wasn't true; they had all seen Molly's mundane ingredients, and Slughorn himself had kept her brew in his classroom overnight. Molly won thirty points for her house, and no one ever mocked bush potions again.

They spent the rest of that class talking about additives to the Liquid Fire potion that could adapt it to different uses; melting only specific materials, or reducing its heat to extend its effect for a longer burn. The lesson lacked the razzle-dazzle of working with dragon's breath , but it was interesting enough. Harry took notes with a small point of pride in knowing that, after six years, he was finally beginning to understand potion-making. The key had been having a teacher who wasn't a slimy, loathsome git of a murderer.

After the class, Harry packed up his scrolls. He heard Neville say behind him, "For the first time in years, I'm actually excited for Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"I must be mental for saying so, but I might be too," Ron admitted. He threw Hermione a teasing look and added, "I suppose you've already read everything written on the subject of mental constructions and energy and all that nonsense."

Hermione beamed excitedly. "I couldn't find anything in the regular collections about Professor Dresden's lessons. He's teaching us something I could never learn from books alone!"

She and Ron started out the door. Neville trailed after them, hovering at the edge of the conversation while Ron laughed. "And here I thought the very idea of learning without books would drive you batty."

Bundling up the last of his things, Harry hurried after them. He had just stepped out the door when a wall of black robes stepped in front of him. Harry bounced off of a green and silver Slytherin tie as the bulk of Crabbe and Goyle herded him back against the corridor wall.

"Your girlfriend is a right freak with a cauldron, Potter," Crabbe said.

Harry's friends were at the stairs when they saw him cornered. All three of them turned back, starting to speak, when four Sixth-year Slytherins announced themselves on the steps above them. All four boys had their wands drawn, forcing Ron and Hermione to lower their hands from their robes' pockets.

Scowling, Harry retorted, "I don't have a girlfriend. Maybe you should keep up on castle gossip before you start spreading new rumors."

"Right. Because it's always all about you, innit?" Goyle sneered.

"Ickle Potter the celebrity," jeered Crabbe.

Harry felt hot anger climbing up his neck, anger that doubled when he saw the other Slytherins surrounding his friends. They were all too old to put up with schoolboy bullying, and Harry had far more important things to worry about than the Slytherins' dislike of him. "Why don't you go find Malfoy and bark at him a while? Doesn't he get cross when you two break your leads?" he snapped.

Crabbe and Goyle loomed larger than ever, their faces turning red at the mention of Malfoy's name. "You shut your mudblood-loving mouth," hissed Goyle. Two wands appeared, pressing toward Harry's throat. Suddenly the distance between Harry's hand and his wand felt like leagues.

Keeping his face stern, Harry said, "If you're looking for a duel, just tell me when and where. And if Malfoy wants a duel, even better."

Crabbe's hand slammed Harry back into the wall, knocking the wind out of him. The back of his head struck the stone, throwing stars into his eyes. When Goyle joined in, the enormous boys pinned him to the wall hard enough to lift Harry off his feet.

"We're not looking to duel, Potter," Goyle grunted.

As Harry's head throbbed, he felt his stomach drop with the realization that they were indeed too old for schoolboy bullying. Crabbe and Goyle hated him as fiercely as anyone, save perhaps Voldemort, ever had. They wanted him dead, and they weren't interested in fair ways of going about that grisly task.

"What seems to be the issue here?"

Snape's voice made the Slytherin duo jump backwards. The other Slytherins backed away from Harry's friends, who parted to make room for the hook-nosed professor to descend the stairs. His black robes swishing with his ponderous steps, Snape brushed past the Gryffindors to stand before Crabbe and Goyle, who tucked their wands behind their backs.

Dark brows creased at the sight of the two hulking students. "And what business might two upstanding Slytherins have with Mister Potter?" Snape asked.

"We were just asking Potter something, is all," grunted Crabbe.

Snape glanced from one to the other, and then fixed Harry with a disinterested look. "I find that hard to believe. The mind boggles at the very notion learning anything of use from Potter."

Harry glared, but bit his tongue.

"I suggest you all proceed to your next class," Snape said loudly, making it sound like anything but a suggestion.

The Slytherins jumped at once at their former house head's command. The Sixth-years shuffled up the stairs, returning Ron's sneer with rude gestures once they were certain Snape's head was turned. As Crabbe and Goyle left, they threw murderous looks at Harry that made him shiver.

Ron, Hermione, and Neville started down the stairs to help Harry when Snape's voice stopped them in mid-step. "I believe Gryffindor students also have classes to get to," he told them.

For a moment, Ron looked like he might protest. Harry gave a subtle shake of his head, trying to warn his friends away. Their new headmaster doubtlessly couldn't wait to drop the full weight of his authority on his least favorite students. Besides, the pompous fool might have just saved their lives. What did Harry care if Snape blew a little hot air?

But Harry's opinion quickly changed when Snape stuck out an arm to stop him from following his friends. "A moment, Potter, if you please," said Snape.

Harry gritted his teeth and leaned back against the wall, helpless to follow his friends as they reluctantly left. Soon it was just Harry and Snape standing outside of the dungeon. The distant sound of bustling trickled down the stairs as students hurried to their next classes.

Seconds turned into minutes as Snape stood before him. The oily Death Eater said nothing, but made no move to leave. Harry knew better than to try and ask the reason for their impromptu meeting, but he could feel the anger creeping up his face again as he matched Snape silence for silence, staring back at the man as hard as he could. Pressure began to mount between them, a sensation that reminded Harry of their abortive Occlumency lessons.

At last Snape drew a pocket watch and checked its face. "I believe you are now late to your next class, Potter. Detention with me, tonight. Perhaps that will help convince you not to dawdle in the halls. It seems to have caused quite a bit of grief as of late."

Harry felt something pressing into his hand. He suddenly realized he had reached into his pocket to grasp his wand. His whole arm shook with the effort of keeping himself from drawing on Snape then and there.

"Anything to say, Potter?" Snape asked.

It took Harry a long moment to force the word up his clenched throat. "Nothing," he growled.

Dark eyes glimmering, Snape said, "Nothing, 'Headmaster.' "

"Headmaster," Harry echoed, his voice slipping out through clenched molars.

Snape had never looked more pleased. He left in a swirl of robes, sparing only a brief glance over his shoulder to say, "Ten o'clock, tonight. Be off to class." Then he slithered into Slughorn's classroom, doubtless to spread more misery in there.

Two near duels in as many minutes had made Harry's heart into a frustrated tempest. It hammered in his ears while he forced himself to climb the stairs.

A whorl of colors sung from lanterns and chandeliers behind him as he walked the empty corridors to class. He heard Peeves' laughter before he spotted the repugnant little imp, who laughed at him all the way to class, pausing only long enough to sing.

_Oh Potter, it's hotter than ever before!_

_You're late once again to settle the score!_

_How can you hope to save all that's at stake?_

_When you're already trapped in the guts of a snake?_

The stun charm Harry snapped at him burst harmlessly against the ceiling as Peeves whizzed behind a tapestry to avoid it. The poltergeist's laughter followed him into the classroom, adding insult to his pride's injury.

Dresden's board already swam with new equations, and his chalk was poised to add even more as Harry entered. The tall wizard made some joke about his tardiness that Harry was too furious to hear as he took his seat between his friends and began trying to catch up with parchment and quill.

Like before, Dresden lectured for a while, and then broke the class into individual exercises with leaves. Even wandless, the Gryffindors found the spell easier to manage this time. Dresden's suggestion of making their mental constructs resemble a wand were helping immensely, judging by the number of leaves flying across the room.

"That's bullocks!" Ron hissed after Harry finished recounting his run-in with Snape in whispers. "He can't do that!"

Harry still used his memory of the antelope to guide his spell, but he found it easier when he imagined himself grasping the memory and rolling it into the shape of a wand. His hand flicked with an irritated gust of air, tossing the leaf from his desk. Then he repeated the incantation and managed to return the leaf to the table with a second gust.

"Of course he can," Harry groused. "Snape was already a prig when he was the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Giving him more power could only make him a bigger prig."

Ron hadn't managed to catch his leaf in midair yet, but he also hadn't given himself a nosebleed or thrown their table across the room. "McGonagall won't stand for this. If Snape starts terrorizing her house, she'll come down on him like a giant off a broken Quiddich broom."

The image made Harry smirk for a moment. "Not Gryffindors. Just me. And I'm not exactly McGonagall's prized student at the moment," he said. "Besides, she doesn't have nearly the clout she did when Dumbledore was here."

"Could you both please save your gossip for the common room?" Hermione grumbled at them. "Some of us are trying to learn."

Her leaf sat unperturbed atop her book. It had sat there throughout the exercise without the slightest bit of attention paid to her spellcraft. Dresden had given her a few words of advice, and she had kept her notes splayed in front of her, but no amount of effort or rereading seemed to be able to move her leaf.

Ron made a grand production of looking around the room. Nearly everyone in their class had mastered the wind charm. Even those that were struggling had at least managed to move some amount of air. Only Hermione's leaf refused to move at all.

She gave Ron a testy look. "Oh, very funny. It's a completely new technique. Of course it's going to take some time to work out the particulars."

"Would you like some help?" Ron asked. As her expression curdled, he grinned, and said, "Oh, come on! This is the first time I've ever done better than you in anything. What's the harm in letting me help and letting me enjoy myself a bit?"

Hermione's face hardened into a wall of ice. She didn't speak to Ron for the rest of the day.

When the time came for Harry's detention, he almost felt relieved. The glacier sitting between Ron and Hermione had become unbearable, and any excuse to leave seemed like a good one. But with every step he took toward Snape's office, he missed their silence more and more.

Snape waited for him outside the office doors. Another student waited behind him, someone taller than Harry by several inches whose long blond hair hid her face. Harry couldn't see her house colors or her face, and wondered who else had earned Snape's ire that day.

A shade of a smile crossed Snape's features. "Good to see you've discovered a new inner reserve of punctuality, Potter. Follow me," he said.

As Harry fell into step behind Snape, he stole a glance at the other student walking beside him. An electric shock hit his stomach as he exclaimed, "Molly?"

Molly glanced sidelong at him, brushing the long hair from her face with an annoyed gesture. "Hey, Goggles," she mumbled.

Harry hadn't recognized her. The bubblegum pink and snow white was gone from her hair, replaced with the color of soft gold, and it had been grown overnight from shoulder-length to now hang down at the small of her back. As she pushed the hair from her face, Harry thought she looked sickly. He had to stare a moment more before he realized she wasn't wearing her customary makeup.

He kept his questions bottled up as Snape led them through the castle with a illuminated wand. They twisted and turned through the dark halls with only the echo of their footsteps for company. At last they came upon a room glowing with lantern light. It was Hogwart's Trophy Room.

"Because you both seem to have little esteem for your instructors or your school, you will spend time contemplating new examples of scholarly excellence to which you might aspire as you polish the school's awards." With a wave of his wand, Snape produced two old rags that smelled faintly of mop water. "And since neither of you seem to value your magic education, you will do so as would a Muggle."

"What?" Harry snapped as he took the rag. "The whole room?"

Snape's dark eyes met his. That same pressure he had felt earlier returned, stronger than ever as Snape told him, "You will clean until I return. And if I find your efforts lacking, you will clean again tomorrow night and every night thereafter until I am satisfied you both understand the privilege of attending this school."

And with that, he broke from Harry's gaze. The pressure vanished as Harry watched him stride from the room, but hot embers of rage still burned deep in Harry's chest.

Steadying himself with a breath, Harry took his rag to the nearest wall and began wiping at a row of plaques. Each plaque commemorated a notable alumnus of Hogwarts who had gone on to do great things and, more than likely, donated a large sum of galleons to the school.

Molly moved to the other side of the room and worked at a collection of pictures. Trying to sound casual, Harry asked, "So what did you do to earn this 'privilege?' "

"Evidently I was a little too sassy when he tried to stop me in the hall for having an unknotted tie," she grumped. "We had differing opinions about what an appropriate appearance might be for a witch."

Harry snorted, imagining Molly trying to argue for wearing her T-shirt and cutoff jeans instead of her school uniform. The expression on imaginary Snape's face made him smile. "That must have been quite a disagreement."

"The word 'pompous' might have come up," she admitted, and then added, "loudly."

He couldn't help but laugh aloud. But when he glanced back, he saw Molly ducking her head behind a curtain of her transfigured hair, and his smile faded. "Is that what happened to your hair?" he asked.

"And my makeup," she groused. "It was gone from my room when I got back. He said my appearance and my wand-work was an embarrassment to the school." She began mimicking Snape's basso monotone, pinching her nose as she said, "If you wish to make a mockery of your hair, you will learn to do so with magic."

It took polyjuice potion to affect any real changes to a wizard's appearance, but the charms to change one's hair were relatively simple. Madam Pomfrey had taught them to Seamus in his third year after she grew tired of regrowing his eyebrows for him. Harry had seen them used, but he had never bothered to learn them himself. His hair had always been a long, shaggy, minor annoyance that he had learned to live with in his time with the Dursleys. Certainly Vernon and Petunia never took him to a salon like they did Dudley, and the couple of times Petunia had taken a pair of shears to his head had been a nightmare.

From the sound of her tone, though, Harry guessed she hadn't managed those charms yet. She was still new to wands, as new as Harry was to wandless magic. "Sorry," he said lamely.

"Yeah," grunted Molly.

After biting his lip, Harry added, "And, um, I'm sorry about what happened the other day at breakfast."

"Yeah, whatever," she grunted again.

Her eyes flashed angrily in reflection off of a picture. Harry lowered his rag from another self-congratulatory plaque as he turned and said, "I really am. It's not your fault you didn't know how the Houses work."

She looked back, her expression venomous. "Oh, it's not my fault. How generous of you. But are you sure it's okay if you talk to me now? I know Griffons and Snakes aren't supposed to talk to each other, and I don't want you getting in any more trouble."

He grimaced. "I'm not worried about getting in trouble, obviously," he said, gesturing with his rag. "And sitting with other Houses isn't against any rules. It's just... It isn't done," he said.

"So you don't have any friends that aren't Gryffindors?" she demanded.

His mind flashed to Luna Lovegood and her dreamlike smile. "I do," he said. "But Slytherins and Gryffindors are different."

Molly rolled her eyes. She picked a shelf of trophies even farther away from Harry and started slapping her rag at them. "Yeah, I've heard all about Gryffindors this week," she said.

He scowled. "And what does that mean?"

This time her voice was low-pitched and gruff. Harry thought she might be imitating Crabbe or Goyle. "Don't let those Gryffindors walk all over you. They already swagger about like they're kings of the bloody school."

"I don't think I'm king of anything!" Harry spat. "Slytherins are the ones who'll run the whole bloody world if we let them!"

She scoffed. "Yeah, I noticed that too. Your bunch are the jocks, and my House is the rich snobs. They're all assholes."

"Then why are you mad at me?" he insisted.

Molly whirled on him, flinging down her rag as she snapped, "Because I thought we were friends!"

The accusation stole the tongue right out of his head. He stammered for a minute, trying to come up with a response. "We are friends," he said at last, uncertainly. "But you're..."

He couldn't bring himself to finish, so Molly said it for him. "But I'm a Slytherin."

"I didn't mean it like that," he muttered into his chest.

"You didn't have to," she sneered. Her arms crossed under her chest as she glanced away. Hints of pink colored her cheeks. "It's not like I came here with all kinds of expectations. I was just goofing around in the tree house, y'know."

Harry's innards flipped. He tried to think of something to say, but memory of soft lips pressing against his drowned out any other thoughts.

Her brows creased, and her blush worsened. "But I thought we were friends. I thought that, even if it does suck moving half a world away to a place where even kindergarteners know more about magic than I do, at least I would have one friend." She hugged herself tighter, her eyes burning a furious hole through the floor, as she said, "Except now some magic hat decides I'm an Alpha Beta, and my one friend has to pretend I don't exist or the other Tri-Lams won't like him anymore."

Why did so little of what Molly said make sense to him? "I know you exist," Harry said. "And I am your friend. But the wizards and witches sorted into Slytherin..."

Her eyes snapped up to his. Tension bunched in her jaw as she said, "What about Slytherins?"

That intense pressure he had felt a moment ago with Snape filled his head again, growing until it felt like his eyes would burst out the back of his head. His clenched fists trembled as he spoke the truth he hadn't wanted to admit since Molly had been sorted.

"There wasn't a single Death Eater alive who didn't start in Slytherin," he said.

A chill ran up Harry's spine as he felt her blue eyes turning to ice. "So now I'm a warlock?" she said flatly. "Death Eater by association?"

His mouth tightened. "The hat doesn't choose for you, Molly. Not completely. It picks the house you know you belong in."

For a moment Harry thought he saw tears blinking in her eyes. It was hard to be sure in the soft lantern light.

"Fuck you, Harry," she spat. She snatched her rag from the floor and stormed to the far side of the room. The pressure in his head eased into sullen misery.

Harry wished he could have lied. He wished the truth weren't so horrible. But the Sorting Hat, and Dumbledore, had told him long ago that students in Hogwarts had more to say about their sorting than any of them imagined. His guilt and anger writhed together in the pit of his stomach, threatening to erupt in a spray of bile the longer he stared after her. So he hid himself behind a shelf of Quidditch Cups and began to polish them furiously.

By the third cup, Harry had decided that he didn't have any reason to feel guilty. Maybe he and Molly had gotten along well over the summer, but things were different at Hogwarts. And as much as he liked her, he knew he couldn't trust a Slytherin. Not anymore. Crabbe and Goyle had taught him that hard lesson in the corridor. The old House rivalries had grown deadly, which meant that whatever feelings he probably, definitely, didn't have for Molly anymore didn't matter.

And by the tenth cup, he almost believed himself.

As he reached for the next cup, he saw a snake embossed upon its front. The sight sent a spike of rage up his arm, and he swept the cup aside with a snarl. It clattered to the floor, disappearing beneath the bottom shelf.

For a fleeting moment, Harry considered leaving it where it lay, and the thought gave him a poisonous smile. Then he thought of how thorough Snape would be with his inspection of the room, and who would get the blame for even a speck out of place in the room. Sighing, he stooped and dug the cup out from under the shelf.

When he pulled it out and dusted it, he saw letters glinting on the back. The names of seven former Slytherin Quidditch champions gleamed in the lantern light. Harry's eye naturally fell across the name of their Seeker. When he recognized the name, he read it again more carefully.

_Regulus Arcturus Black, Seeker_

Black. His godfather's family. Harry's mind wandered, drifting back to another time when he had felt imprisoned and helpless, when the Order had seen fit to keep him under wraps in the detestable Black family home. The family tree in the hallway, with its scorched names and its places of honor, flooded back to Harry, along with a fresh threat of tears as he remembered Sirius talking of his family.

_"From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out."_ Sirius's voice echoed in his memory. _"Well, you don't just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It's a lifetime of service or death."_

Regulus Arcturus Black.

_I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can._

The new words rang in Harry's mind. They were the boasts of whoever had stolen Voldemort's locket and left the fake in its place. The mysterious R.A.B.

_I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more_.

Regulus Arcturus Black.

R.A.B.

Harry gasped as the Quidditch cup tumbled from his hands.


End file.
